Experimental Investigations of Ultrasonic Cavitation

Abstract

Consider the issues facing a typical brand manager, product manager, or marketing-oriented CEO: How do I manage the brand? How will my customers react to changes in the product or service offering? Should I raise price? What is the best way to enhance the relationships with my current customers? Where should I focus my efforts? Business executives can answer such questions by focusing on customer equity—the total of the discounted lifetime values of all the firm's customers. A strategy based on customer equity allows firms to trade off between customer value, brand equity, and customer relationship management. We have developed a new strategic framework, the Customer Equity Diagnostic, that reveals the key drivers increasing the firm's customer equity. This new framework will enable managers to determine what is most important to the customer and to begin to identify the firm's critical strengths and hidden vulnerabilities. Customer equity is a new approach to marketing and corporate strategy that finally puts the customer and, more important, strategies that grow the value of the customer, at the heart of the organization. For most firms, customer equity is certain to be the most important determinant of the long-term value of the firm. While customer equity will not be responsible for the entire value of the firm (eg., physical assets, intel-lectual property, and research and development compe-tencies), its current customers provide the most reliable source of future revenues and profits. This then should be a focal point for marketing strategy. Although it may seem obvious that customer equity is key to long-term success, understanding how to grow and manage customer equity is more complex. How to grow it is of utmost importance, and doing it well can create a significant competitive advantage. There are three drivers of customer equity—value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity (also known as retention equity). These drivers work independently and together. Within each of these drivers are specific, incisive actions,