Measuring Customer Acquisition Value: A Comprehensive Approach to Customer Equity

In information technology era, databases are known as one of the most valuable resources for organizations, especially used in database marketing. Customer Equity is a key concept in Database Marketing which integrates customer acquisition, retention and development. From the perspective of customer equity, customers are the primary source of both current and future cash-flows. Customer equity models emerge as powerful tools to maximize the return on marketing investments, and to guide the allocation of the marketing budget. Because of the importance of customer acquisition as a key dimension of customer equity, this paper focused on the measurement of customer acquisition value. By studying different research papers on customer acquisition and comparing them, we address the gaps especially in quantifying the customer equity and propose some suggestions for more comprehensive assessment of acquisition value.