The Empirical Research of Customer Value Segmentation - A Case Study on the Liner Shipping Industry

• Main Authors: Pan, Ching-Yi, 潘靜怡
• Other Authors: Tang, Edwin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/64941566231054107751

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 管理學院碩士在職專班經營管理組 === 97 === The capital investment of liner shipping industry is huge and it takes long time to pay back. Moreover, severely fluctuant revenue and soaring costs usually eat the profits off. In view of this, liner shipping carriers have to be more mobile and proactive in the resource allocation and marketing strategy in order to increase total value to the company. According to the rule of 80-20（the Pareto principle）, the majority of volume, revenue or even profit comes from the minor customers. To make sure that we allocate resource exactly to key profitable accounts, analysis of customer value is essential and helpful. In this research, we adopt the technique of data mining and take RFM, Customer Lifetime Value and other significant factors as the variables of value segmentation. We classify customers of a liner shipping carrier into 5 clusters including High-value customers, Potential customers, Shopping-around customers, Further-developing customers and Low-value customers. We also validate the result through one-way ANOVA and confirm that there is significant difference among these clusters. In addition, we validate the clusters through Pearson Chi-Square and contingency table to see the distribution among clusters in 3 aspects of customer (channel) types, delivered commodities and destinations/routes, and the Chi-Square result also confirms that there is significant difference among clusters in the distribution. In this research, we also find that 80-20 rule can be applied to customers of liner shipping industry. High-value and Potential customers are the targeted customers whom carriers should focus on. Finally, we propose different marketing strategies to each cluster of customers. We also suggest the carrier could use “alchemy” strategy to promote less valuable customers into more valuable customers in order to boost the overall customer value in the company.