B2c Customer Asset Management Model And Empirical

The marketing concept has reflected a customer-centered viewpoint since the 1960s, but marketing theory and practice have become increasingly customer-centered during the past 30 years. The customer-centered viewpoint is reflected in the concepts and metrics that drive marketing management, including such metrics as customer satisfaction, market orientation, and customer value. In recent years, customer equity and its implications have received increasing attention.Although Rust et al. (2000) discussed the interaction and relative importance of value equity, retention equity and brand equity, which are the three components of customer equity, and Bolton et al. (2004) proposed an integrated framework, called CUSAMS (customer asset management of services) to make a comprehensive assessment of the value of customer assets and the influence of marketing instruments on them, there are still some important issues remaining, such as (1) what the mechanism is among value equity, retention equity and brand equity, and how these components effect customer behavior intentions; (2) how marketing instruments influence customer behavior intentions by the mediator of customer equity. This paper is trying to answer these questions.The paper begins by comprehensively reviewing prior research concerning customer equity and customer asset management. Then, we develop a concept framework about customer equity management. Considering the marketing instruments of China Mobile implemented in the brand of M-Zone, a research model is built subsequently. Empirical study shows that (1) rentention equity is the key variable influenceing customer bebavior intentions; (2) value equity and brand equity influence behavior intentions by the mediating effect of rentention equity; (3) the marketing instruments, focusing on the social aspects of a relationship between service provider and customers, contribute most to customers'behavior intentions.