The Causal Relationships between Aspects of Customer Capital

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a unified framework of the causal relationships among six aspects of customer capital: customer targeting, ability to identify customers' needs, customer service capability, construction and management of a customer information system, market intensity, and customer loyalty.Design/methodology/approach – A financial holding company in an emerging market, with successful customer relationship management, is selected as the case study object. The authors interviewed the management and distributed questionnaires to positions equivalent to or higher than the junior sales manager within two divisions of the corporate banking group. A total of 80 questionnaires were distributed, with a valid return rate of 73.75 per cent. The total number of subjects is 59 and the partial least squares method was adopted to examine the causal relationships between the different aspects of customer capital.Findings – The results support the authors' predictions on the cau...

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