Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is widely discussed in marketing. Unfortunately, given marketers rarely refer to anyone else’s ideas this just leads to lots of people having their own view. This means when one looks up CLV online you are very likely to get a view of the metric that may, or may not, make sense. You want more on…
Category: Marketing Metrics
Accounting For Brands
In a 2003 piece Tony McAuley discussed the history of accounting for intangible values. He interviewed Michael Schurch, CFO of RHM (Rank Hovis McDougall). They discussed the company’s decision to add the value of brands to the balance sheet back in 1988. This created a bit of a stir at the time, and has influenced accounting for…
Accounting For Marketing
Accounting for marketing deserves more consideration. Neither accountants nor marketers seem to give it much thought. That is a shame. It is a key area for understanding business. Yet, few are experts in it. Accounting For Marketing I think that there is a desperate need for marketers to understand accounting. Indeed, I think a lot…
The Tyranny Of Random Facts
BCG have a new piece on measuring marketing results: Making Sense of the Marketing Measurement Mess. There is a lot to like in it. They discuss the tyranny of random facts. Questions To Ask About Marketing Metrics The authors describe a number of questions to ask about marketing metrics. “Do the metrics and tools capture…
Teaching CLV Badly
Ex-Ivey PHD student and now University of Calgary professor, Charan Bagga, and I have just published an article. This focused on the teaching of CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). We surveyed the state of case-based teaching materials related to CLV and found them a pretty shoddy bunch. Teaching CLV badly seems to be the default way to teach…
Hovis And The Valuation of Brands
Today we turn to a history lesson on brand valuation. The story is of Hovis and the valuation of brands. Hovis And The Valuation of Brands Rank Hovis McDougall, a big U.K. food manufacturer in the 1980s decided to record the value of its brands on its balance sheet. This included its internally generated brands. (These are…
Capitalizing Spending On Intangibles
My final comment on Lev and Gu’s The End of Accounting discusses their idea of how to improve financial reporting. This is a bit more controversial to my mind but worth considering. They suggest capitalizing spending on intangibles. Too Many Estimates? The authors argue that accounting uses too many estimates. As such, although the authors…
Who Has An Interest In Changing Accounting?
Baruch Lev and Feng Gu, accounting professors, ask a simple question. Why are managers and auditors so blasé about accounting for intangibles? Lev and Gu, 2016, page 90 Intangibles are a mess in financial accounting. Everyone knows there are obvious problems. So who has an interest in changing accounting? Intangible Assets And The Concept Of Matching…
Financial Information And Stock Prices
For the next few weeks I’ll discuss Lev and Gu’s new book on the problems of financial accounting, The End of Accounting. Here the authors discuss financial information and stock prices. Basically, the relevance of accounting information to investment decisions. Financial Information And Stock Prices: Little Connection This book sets out the case that financial accounting…
What Is Wrong With This CLV Formula?
Peter Fader and Bruce Hardie are experts in understanding the value of customer relationships. They have offered advice on problems with CLV calculations, especially those taught in MBA programs. They ask: “What’s Wrong With This CLV Formula?” Five Issues They outline five issues. Many of these are things to bear in mind that we might…