iValue: A knowledge-based system for estimating customer prospect value

In the past, companies changed their focus from product-oriented within marketing to demand-oriented within quality improvement. Today, they emphasize customer service, customer loyalty, and customer profitability. The significance of customer-centric services has become critical and essential. However, certain research which investigates the effect of customer lifetime value focuses only on lifetime values of existing customers. This study devises a novel model to predict customers’ prospect value. In the proposed model, we utilize the concept of finance which stands in the current status and predicts future value based on historical data. The simulated results reveal that, in a long-term simulation, customer prospect value rises when reach rate increases. Decreasing reach rate and costs result in high customer prospect value; however, the value of customer prospect value decreases in a long-term simulation. The new model complements the existing customer lifetime value model from a different perspective and provides clues to customer value for future researches.