From a marketing perspective, business success hinges on loyal customers who generate revenue. Marketers employ various methods to enhance customer satisfaction, a cornerstone of loyalty and long-term relationships through customer retention. One such method is the customer lifetime value (CLV) metric, which helps identify the most valuable customers over time. This paper analyses publications on CLV and its relevance to customer relationship management (CRM), using desk research and content analysis based on data from the Web of Science platform. Bibliometric indicators examine research productivity, paper types, publication sources, languages, country distributions, and the most active organizations, authors, keywords, and citation patterns. Findings reveal that while the concept of CLV was introduced in 2007, few researchers have explored its significance. This paper aims to fill that gap by investigating the concept in the context of CRM, increasing awareness of its importance. Using bibliometric analysis of previous studies and VOSviewer software for visual representation, this paper provides a foundation for further research on customer lifetime value's role in marketing.
Kuštelega et al. (Wed,) studied this question.