We address a critical question that many firms are facing in this era of "big data'': Can customer data be stored and analyzed in an easy-to-manage and scalable manner without significantly compromising the inferences that can be made about the customers' transaction activity? We address this...

Several researchers have proposed models of buyer behavior in noncontractual settings that assume that customers are “alive” for some period of time and then become permanently inactive. The best-known such model is the Pareto/NBD, which assumes that customer attrition (dropout or...

The Tuscan Lifestyles case (Mason 2003) offers a simple twist on the standard view of how to value a newly acquired customer, highlighting how standard retention-based approaches to the calculation of expected CLV are useless in a noncontractual setting. Using the data presented in the case, it...

"A customer-base audit is a systematic review of the buying behavior of a firm's customers using data captured by its transaction systems. It will help you answer questions such as: How healthy is your customer base? How realistic are your growth objectives? How do your customers differ in terms...