THE ECONOMIC VALUE ADDED OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS – TOWARDS AN APPLI...

Marketing has developed over time towards a more or less intense approach for relationship marketing. Consequently, there has also been a common emphasis on the dual creation of firm and customer value since the late 1990s. Following the discussion and targeting an economic value added (EVA) the concept of the customer life value (CLV) has emerged as one of the key metrics to manage customer relationships and customer equity in many companies. Customer relationships are seen as assets of the firm and therefore a huge variety of models for the valuation of customer relationships have been developed to estimate the their economic value added. But still the application of these models in companies is rare.

In this paper we try to contribute to a higher applicability of these models, e.g. the Customer Lifetime Value. This approach is based on the principles of calculating an Economic Value Added as well as on the target-oriented modeling of costs and revenues – means residual incomes, not cash flows – during the customer relationships and the simulation of alternative scenarios.