Segmentação retrospectiva dos clientes

Ontem, durante mais uma viagem de comboio, tive oportunidade de ler "Segmentation based on customer profitability - retrospective analysis of retail bank customer bases" Journal of Marketing Management, (1997) 13(5), 479-492 de Kaj Storbacka.
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O artigo apresenta várias formas de segmentar clientes actuais com base numa análise retrospectiva.
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"it is increasingly difficult to build marketing activities on the notion of a market. The "markets" are fragmenting rapidly and we are moving towards a time when the only relevant segment is the individual customer. (Moi ici: Olhar olhos nos olhos gente de carne e osso em vez de enganadores fantasmas estatísticos) Taking a genuinely customer oriented view on marketing changes many of the fundamental marketing assumptions and thus marketing in itself changes."
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"The proportion of profitable customers obviously varies among providers. Cooper and Kaplan (I991) suggest that, in certain industrial markets, 20% of the customer relationships stand for 225% of the total customer base profitability."  (Moi ici: E na sua empresa? Qual a % de clientes que têm dado prejuízo e nunca darão lucro?)
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O artigo começa com um exemplo de segmentação retrospectiva com base no critério mais simples: o volume de vendas:
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"It is also interesting to note that the customers with RV between 50.000 and 250.000 represent about 20% of the customer base and stand for approximately 90% of total customer base profitability. Hence, these groups can be argued to be the most important ones. This does not, however, indicate that the customers in these groups as individuals are the most important ones. An average customer, in the highest Relationship Volume group, contributes more than 25 times the profitability of an average customer in the group 25.000-49.999, more than eight times the profitability of an average customer in the group 50.000-99.999, about five times the profitability of an average customer in the group 100.000-249.999, and about threefold the profitability of an average customer in the group 250.000-499.999. The average profitability of customers in the small volume groups that are unprofitable is just a few hundred negative. As almost 50% of all customers, are in these groups, and as it is not possible to increase volume-based revenue (without increasing volume) it could indicate that just a small increase in the average fee-based revenue could have a major impact on the total profitability of the customer base.

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As a conclusion, we note that even the simplest way of segmenting customer bases provides powerful insights in the configuration of customer relationships and creates a foundation for strategic development of products and pricing mechanisms."
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Outros indicadores usados no artigo para segmentar clientes:

• profitability based segmentation
• segmentation based on relatioship volume and customer relatioship profitability

E voltamos sempre ao nosso alicerce: quem são os clientes-alvo? Quem são os clientes que merecem todo o investimento? E quem são os que nos colocam numa relação ganhar-perder? Não esquecer os números de Jonathan Byrnes