Privacy, risk and good and bad consumers
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ison Bond is a director of ABA Research Ltd ([email protected]), a firm specialising in services research in consumer, business and public sector markets. Alison’s researches into customer services and customer experience has helped many organisations completely rethink their views on the role and execution of their service and on their delivery business strategies. She managed one of the country’s leading data processing research companies before starting ABA Research in 1995. Alison is a vastly experienced focus group facilitator and has moderated hundreds of groups during her career. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Direct Hit, a textbook on direct marketing. She writes numerous articles on customer service and measurement and is a full member of the Market Research Society (MRS). Her latest book The Handbook of Direct and Interactive Marketing was published by Pearson in 2005.
INTRODUCTION Technology and data sources now make it possible for companies of all sizes (not just large) and government organisations to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ individuals and groups. These developments also make it much easier to predict likely ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ using various indicators. Where use of these indicators is forbidden for some reason, surrogates may be sought. Following this approach requires an organisation to define what it means by ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and to keep this definition under review according to the performance of individuals and evolving law and regulation.
Bryan Foss, Tel/Fax: ⫹44 (0) 20 8776 1363 e-mail: [email protected]
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WHO ARE GOOD CONSUMERS? Of course, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are relative terms. Their definitions change with time, with laws and with the strategies
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and target marketing of companies. One also needs to distinguish between character and behaviour. A consumer who might naturally be ‘bad’ for a company may be constrained to be ‘good’ by product design or service management. Social and economic factors (the economy, neighbourhood) combine with an individual’s characteristics to determine goodness and badness. In the private sector, good individuals are broadly defined as a mixture of some or all of the characteristics listed below. Companies can specialise in dealing with consumers who are ‘not good’ for other companies however, turning them into ‘good’ customers. Thus, some store credit cards are targeted at consumers who are less creditworthy, possibly because of imprudence, or simply low income. So this should be taken more as an example of the spectrum.
Vol. 13, 1, 10–23
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Privacy, risk and good and bad consumers
1 Good net value. They yield more value to the supplier than it costs to service them, taking into account all costs. Consider the consumer who keeps a reasonable bank current account balance, never goes into debt without permission and rarely goes to the branch, but uses cash machines. This consumer is of higher net value than one with the same average b
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