I would like to close our roundtable today by discussing the authors segmentation of customers as butterflies, true friends, strangers, and barnacles. How do you feel about these categories?
Grisaffe: I think there is tremendous benefit in studying the profitability of individual customers and segmenting based on those database metrics. Looking at this information simultaneously in tandem with loyalty metrics is also a great approach. I have no problem with this as one useful basis of segmentation. However, to make it valuable, the definition of loyalty needs to be correct. Just as we would want to have valid measures of profitability, we also want valid measures of loyalty. Lowenstein: I think they would be far closer to the mark if they identified customers according to their degree of true loyalty and commitment to a company. Once having done that, customers can be further segmented according to purchase history, demographics, position in the customer life cycle, etc. Grisaffe: I agree, and if loyalty is appropriately defined as inherently attitudinal and behavioral, considering it in tandem with profitability metrics makes perfect sense. Particularly in light of new cu
