How to really quantify the economic value of customer information in corporate databases

Abstract

This paper presents a novel solution to evaluate the real impact of information and information technology (IT) in companies as fundamental tools to assess how valuable the company’s customers are. The focus is on the concept of information and knowledge as an asset with intrinsic economic value and a variable to consider in order to achieve effective customer management. It is dual research. On the one hand, it is an exploratory-conceptual type based on a review of the literature and, on the other hand, it is descriptive-quantitative through the application of an empirical case study. The proposed new customer relationship management (CRM) information value model (VICRM) offers significantly different results from other traditional models. Its main advantages include the possibility of carrying out new segmentations of customers and estimations of the company’s value. On the other hand, the model corrects some of the classic problems in customer evaluation models, such as their high dependence on the retention rate or being very regressive in the first years. The results of this research aim to serve any company whose business model is Business to Consumer (B2C) to calculate, in an effective way, the value of a large amount of information companies have about their customers.