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Managing customer relationships: Should managers really focus on the long term?

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Author Info
Villanueva, Julian () (IESE Business School)
Bhardwaj, Pradeep (The Anderson School , UCLA)
Chen, Yuxin (New York University)
Balasubramanian, Sridhar (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Abstract

Researchers and business thought leaders have emphasized that, towards maximizing the lifetime value of customers, firms must manage customer relationships for the long term. In contrast to this recommendation, we demonstrate that firm profits in competitive environments are maximized when managers focus on the short term with respect to their customers. Intuitively, while a long term focus yields more loyal customers, it sharpens short term competition to gain and keep customers to such an extent that overall firm profits are lower than when managers focus on the short term. Further, a short term focus continues to deliver higher profits even when customer loyalty yields a higher share-of-wallet or reduced costs of service from the perspective of the firm. Intuitively, while such revenue enhancement or cost reduction effects enhance the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they lead to even more intense competition to gain and keep customers in the short term. These findings suggest that the competitive implications of a switch to a long term customer focus must be carefully examined before such a switch is advocated or implemented. Paradoxically, customer lifetime value may be maximized when managers focus on the short term.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by IESE Business School in its series IESE Research Papers with number D/560.

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Length: 37 pages
Date of creation: 24 May 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0560

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Postal: IESE Business School, Av Pearson 21, 08034 Barcelona, SPAIN
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Related research
Keywords: target pricing; customer equity; price discrimination; customer relationship marketing; customer acquisition; customer retention;

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Beggs, Alan & Klemperer, Paul, 1990. "Multi-Period Competition with Switching Costs," CEPR Discussion Papers 436, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Joseph Farrell & Carl Shapiro, 1988. "Dynamic Competition with Switching Costs," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(1), pages 123-137, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-59, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Yongmin Chen, 1997. "Paying Customers to Switch," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 6(4), pages 877-897, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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