Consumer Analysis
What is Customer Analysis?
June 9th, 2008 by Doug Bright
Customer analysis is the process of determining customer segmentation, value, purchasing behavior and motivation in order to better target marketing and increase sales. Well, that sounds ok in theory but is perhaps a bit too abstract for practical use. Practically speaking, what is customer analysis, really?
The crux of customer analysis is that all customers are not created equal. Companies have some customers who are worth their weight in gold. They buy frequently and spend a lot. They are a pleasure to deal with: no returns, no complaints, no hassles. They also have customers who make life miserable. They inundate customer service centers with calls and constantly return merchandise. They buy infrequently and are happy to take their business to a competitor if it means they can save a dollar.
The top 20% of customers are the lifeblood of a business and contribute 80% of the profit. The bottom 20% at best contribute nothing to the bottom line, and at worst cost more than they contribute.
The purpose of customer analysis is to identify the top 20% of customers (gold customers), middle 60% (silver customers) and bottom 20% (lead customers). We then try to determine how to keep the gold customers happy and how to encourage silver customers to become gold customers. Then we have to figure out what to do with our lead customers.
We can do a basic customer analysis in four steps:
1. Who are my customers? Which customers are valuable? Which aren’t?
There are many ways to determine a customer’s value. One of the most accepted from is using a metric called customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV estimates how much a profit customer will contribute over his/her “lifetime”. By comparing CLVs among customers (or more often, among customer segments), we get a good idea of which customers are valuable and which are not.
Another method that can be slightly easier to use is a recency, frequency, monetary analysis. This method
June 9th, 2008 by Doug Bright
Customer analysis is the process of determining customer segmentation, value, purchasing behavior and motivation in order to better target marketing and increase sales. Well, that sounds ok in theory but is perhaps a bit too abstract for practical use. Practically speaking, what is customer analysis, really?
The crux of customer analysis is that all customers are not created equal. Companies have some customers who are worth their weight in gold. They buy frequently and spend a lot. They are a pleasure to deal with: no returns, no complaints, no hassles. They also have customers who make life miserable. They inundate customer service centers with calls and constantly return merchandise. They buy infrequently and are happy to take their business to a competitor if it means they can save a dollar.
The top 20% of customers are the lifeblood of a business and contribute 80% of the profit. The bottom 20% at best contribute nothing to the bottom line, and at worst cost more than they contribute.
The purpose of customer analysis is to identify the top 20% of customers (gold customers), middle 60% (silver customers) and bottom 20% (lead customers). We then try to determine how to keep the gold customers happy and how to encourage silver customers to become gold customers. Then we have to figure out what to do with our lead customers.
We can do a basic customer analysis in four steps:
1. Who are my customers? Which customers are valuable? Which aren’t?
There are many ways to determine a customer’s value. One of the most accepted from is using a metric called customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV estimates how much a profit customer will contribute over his/her “lifetime”. By comparing CLVs among customers (or more often, among customer segments), we get a good idea of which customers are valuable and which are not.
Another method that can be slightly easier to use is a recency, frequency, monetary analysis. This method