Measuring customer attractiveness

Various beneficial consequences can accrue when a customer is perceived to be an attractive customer, particularly in a business-to-business context. Opinions differ as to what makes for customer attractiveness and a number of different features have been suggested as contributing to it. Currently there exists no comprehensive view of what factors constitute customer attractiveness and how this may be valued, measured and evaluated. Drawing on various facets of customer attractiveness suggested in the literature, this paper seeks to delineate the customer attractiveness construct and develop an instrument to measure it. The paper concludes by discussing how the scale developed can be used as a tool to address some critical issues in assessing customer attractiveness.

► An instrument to measure customer attractiveness in Business to Business context is developed. ► Customer attractiveness is defined as a relational construct. ► Customer attractiveness assessments are based on expected outcomes and arise from customer-supplier interactions. ► Factor analysis results suggest four factors: Development potential, Intimacy, Profitability and Relational fit. ► The attractiveness scale permits tracking the variation in customer attractiveness across relationships and over time.