The Impact of Marketing-Induced versus Word-of-Mouth Customer Acquisition on Customer Equity Growth

Julian Villanueva, Shijin Yoo, Dominique M. Hanssens

Journal of Marketing Research · 2008 · Volume 45 · Issue 1

Abstract

Companies can acquire customers through costly but fast-acting marketing investments or through slower but cheaper word-of-mouth processes. Their long-term success depends critically on the contribution of each acquired customer to overall customer equity. The authors propose and test an empirical model that captures these long-term effects. An application to a Web hosting company reveals that marketing-induced customers add more short-term value, but word-of-mouth customers add nearly twice as much long-term value to the firm. The authors illustrate their findings with some dynamic simulations of the long-term impact of different resource allocations for acquisition marketing.

Keywords

customer equity, customer acquisition, word of mouth, customer lifetime value, resource allocation

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