Driving Profitability by Encouraging Customer Referrals: Who, When, and How
开发并测试了一种计算客户推荐价值的新方法，通过四个实地实验发现，结合客户终身价值和推荐价值来管理客户能最大化盈利能力。
Many firms are now using referral marketing campaigns to harness the power of word of mouth and to increase referrals to acquire new customers. Prior research has identified a method of computing the value of referrals using only a customer's actual past referral behavior to compute customer referral value (CRV). In this article, the authors develop and test a new four-step approach to compute CRV. In addition, they determine the behavioral drivers of CRV and then identify the most effective methods of targeting the most promising customers on the basis of their customer lifetime value (CLV) and CRV scores. The authors illustrate and test this approach through four separate field experiments with firms from two industries: financial services and retailing. They find that to maximize profitability, it is critical to manage customers in terms of both their CLV and CRV scores and that understanding the behavioral drivers of CRV can help managers better target the most profitable customers with their referral marketing campaigns.