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• Background Note | HBS Case Collection | July 2010 (Revised January 2017)

  Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Customer Lifetime Value Analysis

  Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery

  Customers are increasingly being viewed as assets that bring value to the firm. Customer lifetime value is a metric that allows managers to understand the overall value of their customer base and relate it to three customer strategies firms employ: asset acquisition—attracting new customers to the firm; asset maximization—maximizing the value the firm extracts from each customer; and asset retention—retaining existing customers for the long-term. The note gives students a foundation for analyzing marketing cases, as well as providing an analytical structure and process for completing a marketing plan. The note is accompanied by a free Excel worksheet that contains sample problems, prebuilt Excel models to calculate customer lifetime value, and charts and graphs that help visualize the results.

  Keywords: customer lifetime value; Return on investment; customer acquisition; customer retention; customer churn; ＂marketing analytics＂; marketing; customer relationship management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Measurement and Metrics; Strategic Planning; Value;

  Citation:

  Steenburgh, Thomas, and Jill Avery. "Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Customer Lifetime Value Analysis." Harvard Business School Background Note 511-029, July 2010. (Revised January 2017.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2013 (Revised April 2016)

  StriveTogether: Reinventing the Local Education Ecosystem

  Allen Grossman, Ann Lombard and Noah Fisher

  StriveTogether aimed to improve education outcomes by coordinating the actions of diverse community stakeholders—nonprofit service providers, school districts, government, parents, businesses and others. StriveTogether had an intense focus on collective impact—"the commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem"—and the use of data to drive decisions. In the case, managing director Jeff Edmondson is faced with two dilemmas: how to attract business engagement in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, California, and how to achieve greater results in the communities that had implemented the StriveTogether framework.

  Keywords: education reform; education; not for profit; communities; collaboration; collective impact; Nonprofit Organizations; Education; Business and Community Relations; Education Industry; United States;

  Citation:

  Grossman, Allen, Ann Lombard, and Noah Fisher. "StriveTogether: Reinventing the Local Education Ecosystem." Harvard Business School Case 314-031, October 2013. (Revised April 2016.) (available here.)  View Details

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• Background Note | HBS Case Collection | February 2010 (Revised March 2016)

  Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Break-even Analysis

  Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery

  Marketing managers are often called upon to make recommendations for or against programs that cost money to implement. Before expenditures are made, managers want to be sure that they will be getting a return on their investment. One way of assessing this is by calculating the breakeven point. In this note, we introduce the concept of breakeven analysis and show how it is used to guide marketing decision making. This analysis helps students assess the feasibility of proposed fixed and variable marketing expenditures, the feasibility of permanent pricing changes, and the feasibility of a new product introduction. The note gives students a foundation for analyzing marketing cases, as well as providing an analytical structure and process for completing a marketing plan. The note is accompanied by a free Excel worksheet that contains sample problems, pre-built Excel models to calculate breakeven, and charts and graphs that help visualize the results.

  Keywords: Decision Making; Investment Return; Spending; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Mathematical Methods;

  Citation:

  Steenburgh, Thomas J., and Jill Avery. "Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Break-even Analysis." Harvard Business School Background Note 510-080, February 2010. (Revised March 2016.)  View Details

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