Should You Punish or Reward Current Customers?

• Autores: Jiwoong Shin, K Sudhir
• Localización: MIT Sloan management review, ISSN 1532-9194, Vol. 55, Nº 1, 2013, págs. 59-64
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • A fictional anecdote represents a real customer management dilemma faced by many companies nowadays: Should we offer better deals to current customers or to new ones? In particular, at what cost should we keep current customers, as opposed to seeking out new ones? The question is simple, but the answer is not. The answer depends on two factors: customers shopping flexibility and the degree to which some customers are much more valuable than others. In markets that have a high degree of both flexibility and value concentration, companies should focus on rewarding their own customers, in particular, their best customers. If either of these characteristics is not in place, that is, either the value concentration is low, shopping flexibility is low or both are low, then managers should focus on rewarding new customers or those drawn from the competition. While selectively rewarding the most profitable customers makes intuitive sense, it is not necessarily obvious how to identify those customers, or what to do about customers who are not particularly profitable.