Customer Equity: Measurement, Management and Research Opportunities

Despite the recent academic interest in the study of customer equity (CE henceforth), a comprehensive discussion of the prevailing research issues has not been provided. There is a shift in the interest of managers and researchers from a traditional focus on product management to a more recent focus on customer relationship management (CRM). We believe that research on CE could provide the necessary tools to link CRM to long-term financial performance. In this paper, we (a) discuss the academic and strategic importance of CE, (b) provide an extensive literature review, and (c) prioritize future research. We argue that there are two major agendas for future research in CE. The first is to provide better measures (e.g. the measurement of customer lifetime value), and the second is to identify the strategies that lead to CE maximization. We emphasize modeling approaches that have been used or could be used to tackle the suggested research questions. A special focus is given to statistical models that are capable of incorporating long-run dynamics.