Customer Equity
Building and Managing
Relationships as Valuable Assets
Customer Equity is a
must-read for serious marketers. The authors have taken a holistic approach to the many
facets of developing true client relationship management by citing relevant case studies
from leading customer-driven companies. Practical and insightful
WHAT'S A CUSTOMER WORTH? The
company that can answer this question precisely is the company with an edge in the
customer-based, technology and information intensive economy of today. But how can an
asset as intangible as customer value be measured? This timely book provides a solution: a
fully developed, highly practical new marketing system for measuring and managing customer
value as a financial asset a system uniquely suited to today's rapidly changing,
increasingly digital marketplace.
How has the management or
mismanagement of customer assets played into the successes, failures, at-risk status, or
Cinderella stories of GM, Amazon, AOL Time Warner, FedEx, the U. S. Armed Forces, Oprah,
Bluefly.com, and Harley Davidson? Drawing on these and other examples, the authors explain
the strategies and tactics that make customer equity management work. They outline
customer equity's three core strategies customer acquisition, customer retention, and
add-on selling and the balance among them, and explain how the customer life cycle affects
strategy and the marketing mix. Detailed, how-to chapters follow, clearly mapping out
methods and practices for organizational restructuring, customer equity measurement,
customer equity accounting, database management, and data analysis.
Along with strategic and
tactical guidance, Customer Equity provides precise metrics for evaluating a business more
effectively and improving performance the "activity-based management" of a
company's marketplace. The authors present a
new framework for structuring
go-to-market activities that links those activities to useful metrics and allows
better-informed marketing decisions.
Marking a decisive move away
from the traditional focus on mass marketing and brand equity, Customer Equity equips
companies with the knowledge to manage customer portfolios across segments and overtime,
and gives marketers the means to lengthen customer life cycles, tailor the marketing mix,
optimize cross-functional operations, and balance customer acquisition and retention. In
doing so. Customer Equity enhances the ability of marketers, IT professionals, senior
executives, and managers to make better decisions, generate higher profits, and increase
shareholder wealth.
Whether for its analysis of
emerging marketing trends, blueprints for effective customer equity management, or
practical advice and guidelines for implementing and using this new system, Customer
Equity \sihe book companies and marketers must consult if they hope to acquire and retain
the most attractive customers-and the competitive edge in today's marketplace.
For more information on the
topics in this book, go to the Web site www.customerequity.com.
ROBERT C. BLATTBERG is a
Professor at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago. GARY GETZ is
a Managing Principal at Integral, Inc. in northern California. JACQUELYN S. THOMAS is a
Professor at Emory's Goizueta School of Business in Atlanta
228 pages Hardcover