petsJfB(2008)58:1–20
DOI10.1007/s11301-008-0032-8
S T A T E-O F-T H E-A R T-A R T I K E L
Customer value from a customer perspective:
a comprehensive review
Albert Graf·Peter Maas
Received:27April2007/Accepted:18February2008/Published online:13March2008weapons
©Wirtschaftsuniversit¨a t Wien,Austria2008
Abstract The value concept is one of marketing theory’s basic elements.Identi-fying and creating customer value(CV)–understood as value for customers–is regarded as an esntial prerequisite for future company success.Nevertheless,not until quite recently has CV received much rearch attention.Ideas on how to concep-tualize and link the concept to other constructs vary widely.The literat
ure contains a multitude of different definitions,models,and measurement approaches.This art-icle provides a broad overview,analysis,and critical evaluation of the different trends and approaches found to date in this rearchfield,encompassing the development of perceived and desired customer value rearch,the relationships between the CV construct and other central marketing constructs,and the linkage between CV and the company interpretation of the value of the customer,like customer lifetime value (CLV).The article concludes by pointing out some of the challenges thisfield of rearch will face in the future.
Keywords Customer value·Desired customer value·Perceived customer value·Consumer behaviour
Zusammenfassung Die Identifizierung und Schaffung von Wert f¨u r den Kunden –Customer Value(CV)–wird als zentrale V oraustzung f¨u r zuk¨u nftige Erfolge A.Graf(u)
Rearch Associate,Institute of Insurance Economics,University of St.Gallen,Kirchlistras2,
9010St.Gallen,Switzerland
af@unisg.ch
P.Maas
Member of the Executive Board,Institute of Insurance Economics,University of St.Gallen, Kirchlistras2,9010St.Gallen,Switzerland
e-mail:peter.maas@unisg.ch
托业报名
2 A.Graf,P.Maas von Unternehmen betrachtet.Obwohl das Wertekonzept als eines der Basilemente in der Marketingtheorie gilt,wurde das CV-Konstrukt erst in den letzten Jahren zu einem viel erforschten Untersuchungsobjekt.Es entstand eine Vielzahl von Defini-tionen,Modellen und Erhebungsans¨a tzen,die teils stark divergieren.Dier Beitrag liefert einen¨Uberblick der verschiedenen Ans¨a tze und Trends in diem Forschungs-feld.Dier umfasst die Analy der Entwicklung des,,Perceived“und,,Desired“CV,die Beziehungen zwischen dem CV and anderen zentralen Marketingkonstruk-ten,sowie den Zusammenhang zwischen CV und Wert des Kunden f¨u r Unternehmen, z.B.in Form des Customer Lifetime Value.Abschliesnd wird ein Ausblick auf die zuk¨u nftigen Herausforderungen der CV-Forschung gegeben.
Schl¨uslw¨o rter Customer value·Desired customer value·Perceived customer value·Konsumentenverhalten
1Introduction
电话沟通技巧The study of customer value(CV)is becoming significantly more important,both in rearch and in practice.For example,the American Marketing Association re-cently revid its definition of“marketing”to encompass the notion of customer value,and there have been important discussions in the literature about the dom-inant logic in thefield and over the central role customer value plays(American Marketing Association2006;Vargo and Lusch2004).Identifying and creating CV is regarded as an esntial prerequisite for long-term company survival and success (Porter1996;Woodruff1997;Payne and Holt2001;Huber et al.2001).Understand-ing the way customers judge and value a rvice or product is crucial to achieving a competitive advantage.Scientists and practitioners have recognized the power of the CV concept in identifying value for customers and managing customer behaviour (Johnson et al.2006;Kothari and Lackner2006;Setijono and Dahlgaard2007). The goal of CV rearch is to describe,analyze,and make empirically measur-able the value that companies create for their customers and to link the insights to further marketing constructs.Recently,the rearch has also begun to link CV with concepts such as customer lifetime value(CLV)or customer equity in order to asss the return on marketing actions and thefinancial impact of CV on the com-pany.
A multitude of CV approaches have emerged,and somewhat ambiguous empiri-cal results have bee
n prented.Thus far there is remarkably little connsus in the literature regarding notation and conception in this rearchfield.Even the term CV is ud and evaluated in very different ways in the marketing literature(Woodruff 1997).There is no consistent definition for“customer value”by now.Generally,there are two theoretical differentiable approaches:
CV from a company perspective:Here,the value of the customer is central for the provider.The goal is to evaluate how attractive individual customers(customer life-time value)or customer groups(customer equity)are from a company perspective. This approach became a popular rearch topic in the last few years(e Reinartz and Kumar2003;Rust et al.2004;Krafft et al.2005).This rearch stream is cloly re-
Customer value from a customer perspective:a comprehensive review3 lated to relationship marketing,which aims at developing and maintaining profitable business relationships with lected customers.
CV from a customer perspective:The focus here is on value generated by a com-pany’s product or rvice as perceived by the customer or the fulfilment of customer goals and desires by company products and/or rvices.
In this article,we concentrate on the customer perspective and u the term cus-tomer value(CV)to refer to that perspective and the term customer lifetime value (CLV)to refer to a company perspective.The article is divided intofive ctions.The first ction provides a general understanding of CV.Section two describes,analyzes, and evaluates different CV approaches.Next,relationships between the CV construct and other central marketing concepts are analyzed,which is followed by a ction fo-cusing on the merger of the customer and company perspectives by linking CV with CLV.Finally,questions and directions for future rearch are discusd.
2Understanding of customer value
Although CV has become the object of much investigation only during the last few years,the value concept has always been“the fundamental basis for all marketing activity”(Holbrook1994).This is due to its clo relation to the guiding principle of marketing–the voluntary exchange among competent market participants.This exchange view of marketing has a long tradition of acceptance among leading mar-keting Alderson1957;Kotler1972).The voluntary exchange takes place in markets where all involved expect a gain in value and buyers lect that of-fering which amongst all offers afford him the highest expected gain in value(Kotler and Bliemel2001).
However,CV approaches often have their foundation not only in marketing re-arch but also in a variety of other rearchfields,such as strategy and organizational development,as well as in psychology and sociology.According to Payne and Holt (2001),CV rearch has been shaped and influenced by rearch infields such as value chain,augmented product concept,value rearch,customer behaviour,cus-tomer satisfaction,and quality.In particular,the constructs of customer satisfaction (CS)and perceived quality are cloly linked to CV and sometimes even ud syn-onymously in the literature(Walker et al.2006;Gilbert and Veloutsou2006;Rust and Chung2006).
A comparison of the concepts of CV,quality1,and CS demonstrates that the three are cloly linked,but yet parate,constructs(e also Sect.4.1).As quality mostly is defined to be the result of a customer’s subjective evaluation of a company’s product or rvice,most rearchers consider quality as antecedent to CV and as a significant variable with strong influence on customers’innate Zeit-haml1988;Bolton and Drew1991;Allen and Grisaffe2001;Ralston2003).The CV 1For the sake of simplicity,“product and/or rvice quality”is often referred to as simply“quality”in this paper furthermore using this term we refer to perceived quality.Other approaches measure quality in a more objective way especially for products(e Rust and Chung2006).But in regard to the adoption level theory,quality of products and especially of rvices is evaluated regarding the individual adoption level and not objective criteria.
4 A.Graf,P.Maas approach encompass many more facets than quality ,by taking into ac-count cost or risk attributes(Bolton and Drew1991;Zeithaml1988).Regarding CS, most rearchers agree that CS is a post-consumption asssment by the ur about the purchad product or rvice,and conclude–supported by empirical evidence–that CV is an antecedent of customer satisfaction.CS rearch generally focus on benefits(Eggert and Ulaga2002;Sweeney and Soutar2001;De Ruyter et al.1997) and current post-purcha customers.In contrast,CV concepts allow a comparison of both expected benefits and sacrifices in different phas of the purchasing process by both current and potential customers(Woodruff1997;Sweeny and Soutar2001).
The influence of other rearchfields is reflected by the various definitions of CV ud in the literature(e Table1).Terminology such as utility,quality,advantage,or preference is ud to define CV even though the terms themlves are not clearly defined(Woodruff1997;Ulaga2003;Spiteri and Dion2004).Yet,the definitions have in common that CV is considered as a theoretical construct having to do with a customer perspective of provider products or rvices(Huber et al.2001;Spiteri and Dion2004).CV thus differs from“personal or organisational values,tho centrally held and enduring beliefs about right and wrong,good and bad that cut across situ-ations and products or rvices”(Woodruff1997).Furthermore,CV is a subjective construct made up of multiple value components(Ulaga2003;Huber et al.2001).
日常英语对话Despite certain commonalities,the CV definitions prented in Table1,as well as the related CV models,reprent different streams of CV rearch.In principle,CV models can be divided into two categories:
Perceived customer value(PCV):CV is conceptualized as tradeoff between ben-efits and sacrifices with a focus on the concrete performance characteristics of the products/rvices(e Zeithaml1988;Gale1994).
Desired customer value(DCV):CV is conceptualized as a part of the customers’value system.The focus of DCV is on abstract value dimensions,or conquences, derived from specific performance characteristics(e Holbrook1994;Woodruff 1997).
The two categories differ in their levels of abstraction and in their focus(e Table2).However,despite the heterogeneity of the definitions and models,the two CV categories are not mutually exclusive;on the contrary,in many ways the two overlap and veral CV approaches are a combination of both concepts.For example, PCV attributes are also crucial for DCV in fulfilling higher-order goals of customers. Table1Definitions of Customer Value
Zeithaml(1988)“Perceived value is a customer’s overall asssment of the utility of a product江畔独步寻花的诗意
bad on perceptions of what is received and what is given.”
雅思作文培训加盟
Gale(1994)“Customer value is market perceived quality adjusted for the relative price of
your product.[It is]your customer’s opinion of your products(or rvices)
as compared to that of your competitors.”
Holbrook(1994)Customer value is“a relativistic(comparative,personal,situational)preference characterizing a subject’s[consumer’s]experience of interacting with some object
...i.e.,any good,rvice,person,place,thing,event,or idea.”
Woodruff(1997)Customer value is a“customer’s perceived preference for and evaluation of tho product attributes,attribute performance,and conquences arising from u that
facilitate(or block)achieving the customer’s goals and purpos in u situations.”
awful的反义词
Customer value from a customer perspective:a comprehensive review5
Table2Three Forms of Value(Flint et al.1997)将来完成时
nearly
(Personal)Values Desired Value Perceived Value
Definition Implicit beliefs that What customer wants to Asssment of what has guide behaviour happen(benefits sought)happened(benefits and
sacrifices)
Level of Abstract,centrally Less abstract,less Overall view of abstraction held,desired centrally held,lower-order tradeoffs between
end-states,goals,benefits sought to benefits and sacrifices
higher-order goals facilitate higher-order actually received
goal achievement
Locus or Specific to customer Conceptualized interaction Interaction of customer, source of value(person or organization)of customer,product/rvice,and
product/rvice,and a specific u
anticipated u situation situation
Relationship Independent of u Independent of u-Dependent on specific to u situations specific experience u experience Permanence Enduring Moderately enduring Transient over occasions
Thus,only a comprehensive and integrated analysis of both categories provides a full understanding of the complexity of the CV construct.
3Customer value approaches
3.1Perceived customer value(PCV)
Most rearch efforts concentrate on conceptualising CV as trade-off between bene-fits and sacrifices of a product or rvice.In framing PCV,opinions vary widely on what aspects should be included.Generally,the approaches can be divided into an either more product-oriented or more relationship-oriented one.
3.1.1Product-oriented PCV
Product-oriented PCV approaches limit CV on the trade-off between perceived qual-ity and price of a
product or rvice.For many authors,empirically clarifying the relationships between the individual CV elements is of pre-eminent importance,such as the positive relationship between perceived quality and PCV,the negative relation-ship between perceived price and PCV and the relationship between price and quality (Bolton and Drew1991;Gale1994;Oh1999;Kashyap and Bojanic2000;Desarbo et al.2001).
In addition to the fundamental concept of PCV as a trade-off,analysis of the ex-trinsic indicators of perceived product quality and sacrifice is a core element in much PCV rearch.Authors such as Zeithaml(1988),Dodds et al.(1991),Andreasn and Lindestad(1998),Teas and Agarwal(2000)and Ralston(2003)differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic indicators in their PCV concepts.Intrinsic indicators,such as product quality,are a part of the product.They can be changed only if the product is modified.Extrinsic indicators such as price,brand name,level of advertising or coun-
