Customer Value in the Now Economy

My very first business job was in the financial services industry and my title was customer relationship manager. This was long before the emergence of customer relationship management (CRM) tools. My boss at the time was four decades ahead of the mainstream thinking articulated by Phil Kotler in his 2017 article, Customer Value Management - "a company’s job is to create superior customer value in the mind of the customer.” Looking back, I’d say a more accurate title would have been customer value manager because my job was less about the customer experience and increasing customer satisfaction and more about employing data to identify customers from whom we could create and extract more value. This is the focus of customer value management. Peter C. Verhoef and Katherine N. Lemon, define customer value management (CVM), as the optimization of the value of a company’s customer base. CVM expands on customer relationship management. CRM focuses on how a company mana…

National or manufacturer brands have been for a while the choice of consumers and a signal for quality. Consumers usually trust manufacturers’ brands and associate them with a certain level of quality. However, this is not the case for store brands. US consumers still lack the knowledge about private label and avoid buying them unless the product does not generate any risk. Private-label brand success is strongest in commodity driven, high-purchase categories and products where consumers perceive very little differentiation (Nielsen 2014) . While store brands or private label market share keeps growing in many European countries, this is not the case in the United States. Indeed, the market share in several European countries is more than 30% with UK , Spain, and Switzerland having the highest market share among European countries. (PLMA’s International Private Label, 2017). The United States private label market share has been lower than its counterparts in Europe and it is only lat…

Circa late 16th century, the Old World -- the early era of colonization. Why did our ancestors leave England to establish a colony in the New World? Why would they leave the “safe” conditions of England for unknown lands?
Most of England’s populace was ‘country folk’ with little education and even fewer choices as to life decisions. The vast majority of the people were peasants and received little education and had few vocational opportunities beyond being a peasant. There were comparatively few families we would call middle class. London was overcrowded due to a population boom plus arrival of peasants who could not find reasonable employment in the countryside. It was congested with an overwhelming stench. In society, self-indulgence was rampant, rudeness ruled, and social disintegration was evident. Corruption was rampant, at all levels of society.

Religion and church were major issues. The establishment Catholic Church was being challenged by Protestants. Europe and England were in…

Finding superior customer value often requires market research to solve a problem, identify an opportunity, or understand customer behavior.Both qualitative and quantitative market research are useful tools.In quantitative market research, survey design can be a challenge. Writing a useful questionnaire is part art and part science. The purpose of a questionnaire is to gather marketing information that helps you make an informed decision.Once you have decided on the objectives of the market research, how you will use the information, who your respondent target is, and any decision criteria, it is time to draft the questionnaire. Here are 10 helpful guidelines:


1.Include a brief (2 or 3 sentences) introduction to the questionnaire telling the respondent about the questionnaire, thanking the respondent, detailing the estimated time to completion and assuring respondents of the confidentiality of their answers. This will help increase the response rate.
2.Begin the survey with a screening …

[The North Star Metric (NSM) is the single metric that best captures the core value that your product delivers to customers. Optimizing your efforts to grow this metric is key to driving sustainable growth across your full customer base.]  Sean Ellis

           A new and powerful measure that impacts marketing performance (revenue generation and profits) is the North Star Metric (NSM), born in Silicon Valley. Examples of North Star Metrics include Facebook’s daily active users and Airbnb’s night bookings for hosts and guests. An NSM is a single item metric that calculates the overall value that your products and services deliver to customers. Companies using this innovative approach must identify sub-variables that can positively move this measure – e.g., inquiries, user signups, new user activations, customer journey assessments and engagement and retention measures (Ellis, 2017). Bucky Barlow brilliantly explains this idea: “Like its namesake Polaris in the sky, your North Star Metric…