Segmentation based on customer profitability — retrospective analysis of retail bank customer bases

Segmentation continues to be an important marketing concept also in a relationship marketing context. Relationship marketing is, however, more interested in enhancing the existing customer relationships and this generates a need for a better understanding of the existing customer base. The paper argues that “retrospective” or historical analyses, that facilitate the calculation of customer relationship profitability, form an excellent starting point for segmentation of customer bases. Such segmentation is shown to be a strong analytical instrument as a basis for formulating marketing strategies. By using empirical data collected from two extensive case studies of retail banks in the Nordic countries the paper illustrates different ways of segmenting customer bases.