Managing Customers for Profit: Strategies to Increase Loyalty and Build Profits

“This is a milestone book in marketing. Most companies claim they are focused on customers, but even those who are, probably do not take a scientific approach to customer management. Professor V. Kumar is the acknowledged expert on the science of customer management. This important book raises all the key questions in managing customers, provides the analytical tools for optimization, and illustrates these tools with a number of company examples.”

–Philip Kotler, S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

“Delivering lasting client value is at the heart of profitable businesses today. Managing Customers for Profit provides a compelling, empirically-tested approach to significantly enhance traditional customer relationship management initiatives. I highly recommend this book to all those interested in cultivating lasting profitable growth relationships with current and future clients.”

–Tim Bohling, Vice President, Market Intelligence, IBM Americas

“Executives are too often guided by backward-looking, short-term metrics. This book shows how a focus on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) can change management toward long-term results by providing a fresh perspective on customer targeting, retention, and loyalty. Highly recommended–it shows you the way toward strategic customer thinking.”

–Dave Aaker, Vice-Chairman, Prophet, Author of Brand Portfolio Strategy

This book shows you how.

Leading marketing expert V. Kumar shows how to use Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to target customers with higher profit potential…manage and reward existing customers based on their profitability…and invest in high-profit customers to prevent attrition and ensure future profitability. Kumar introduces customer-centric approaches to allocating marketing resources for maximum effectiveness…pitching the right products to the right customers at the right time…determining when a customer is likely to leave, and whether to intervene…managing multichannel shopping… even calculating a customer’s referral value.

Drawing on his extensive experience consulting with world-class marketing organizations, Kumar illuminates the challenges of transitioning from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach and presents proven solutions. Simply put, this book’s techniques offer marketing executives a complete framework for linking their investments to business value–and maximizing the lifetime value of every single customer.

Foreword xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xviii

About the Author xix

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: Maximizing Profitability 11

Chapter 3: Customer Selection Metrics 29

Chapter 4: Managing Customer Profitability 59

Chapter 5: Maximizing Customer Profitability 75

Chapter 6: Managing Loyalty and Profitability Simultaneously 93

Chapter 7: Optimal Allocation of Resources across Marketing and Communication Strategies 113

Chapter 8: Pitching the Right Product to the Right Customer at the Right Time 127

Chapter 9: Preventing Attrition of Customers 143

Chapter 10: Managing Multichannel Shoppers 163

Chapter 11: Linking Investments in Branding to Customer Profitability 187

Chapter 12: Acquiring Profitable Customers 205

Chapter 13: Managing Customer Referral Behavior 223

Chapter 14: Organizational and Implementation Challenges 249

Chapter 15: The Future of Customer Management 267

Index 283 

V. Kumar was recently honored as one of the world’s top five-ranked marketing scholars. He has taught and consulted for many Global Fortune 500 firms and universities, and has published award-winning articles in many scholarly journals and business publications, including the Harvard Business Review and the Journal of Marketing. Kumar has co-authored textbooks on marketing research, including his recent Customer Relationship Management: A Databased Approach. His current research focuses on brand management, word-of-mouth marketing, international diffusion models, and customer relationship management.