Customer portfolio analysis for strategy development in direct marketing

Segmenting existing customers into distinct groups based on their dollar purchases and the product categories which they buy can reveal which accounts are contributing substantially to net profits and which should receive more or less attention relative to others. Detailed profile analyses may be developed on the demographics, product-related psychographics, and buying behavior of competitors’ products for each customer segment. Insights for refining existing and creating new product-market positioning strategies are likely to result from such profile analyses. In the present article a framework for performing customer portfolio analysis is described and applied, using the customer database for a large, retail-direct marketing firm. The article concludes with recommendations for additional empirical research and strategic use of customer portfolio analysis.