Peter Fader

Peter Fader Speaking Topics

• Establishing Competitive Advantage Through Customer Centricity

  More companies – both large and small – are talking about customer centricity as a new management framework that allows them to build stronger (and more profitable) relationships with customers by better understanding their behaviors and anticipating their needs. But firms have different perspectives about what customer centricity really means, and how to best to implement it. Professor Fader will clarify this important concept and convey what executives really need to know about this emerging strategic perspective. He will provide a brief overview of the traditional product-centric approach and some of the evolving concerns arising from it. He will then focus on the nature of customer centricity (e.g., how do a local coffee shop and Starbucks compare to each other?), the key factors in implementing it successfully, and how it can help transform a company and drive profitable growth.

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• How Can Customer Centricity Be Profitable?

  Many experts are touting the virtues of customer centricity as a valuable emerging business model, but there is a lot of confusion about what this concept means – and uncertainty about whether and how it can lead to greater profitability. We dive deep into the profitability question: given the risks and costs of becoming customer centric, how can it be more profitable than the more traditional product-centric approach? We carefully examine the tactical “building blocks” underlying customer centricity (i.e., customer acquisition, retention, and development), and point out some subtle but important insights about the interplay among them. We highlight a number of actionable suggestions to help managers make the most effective and efficient use of each of them.

• Customer Valuation Finally Comes of Age

  Marketers have been throwing around terms such as CLV, LTV, and a variety of other labels for customer valuation for several decades now. But besides a few notable applications it has been mostly “cheap talk” – either an unfulfilled aspiration on the part of managers, or a "quick and dirty" analysis, lacking proper validation, that is used by a small group within the firm but fails to get traction across the organization. Fortunately, these frustrating days are ending: customer valuation is finally coming to the forefront and it is here to stay. A variety of factors are driving this change, including better customer-level data (far more timely, complete, and accurate than ever before); better computing and IT skills (enabling a broader set of managers to build and use these models), and a stronger competitive imperative (as more firms shift from product- to customer-centric thinking). In this talk we will discuss this important trend, its implications for executives, and cover a few recent examples of companies (both B2B and B2C) that have used customer valuation in surprising ways and with compelling results.

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• Machine Learning Meets Customer Lifetime Value

  As retailers and other firms strive to make more and better use of customer-level data to deliver meaningful and profitable customer relationships, they are starting to rely on a number of emerging methods, including machine learning and customer lifetime value. While both approaches are valuable, there is a lot of confusion about when and how to use each one. With that baseline understanding in place, we'll then dive into understanding customer lifetime value models, with a primary focus on theory balanced with light quantitative support as needed. At the conclusion of this session, you'll understand when and how to apply different models for different business decisions, and have greater confidence to communicate the motivations, modeling process, and outputs to your internal and external stakeholders.

• Customer-Based Corporate Valuation

  Professor Fader will discuss new ways of valuing corporations from the "bottom up" — i.e., determining the forward-looking financial valuation of the customer base — as a complementary perspective to the standard "top down" methodologies that dominate current valuation practice. This approach is gaining increasing interest and adoption among a variety of functional areas both inside corporations (e.g., business development, accounting and finance, marketing) and outside of them (e.g., private equity, venture capital, shareholder lawsuits). Customer-based corporate valuation (CBCV) is driving a meaningful shift away from the dangerous (but common) mindset of “growth at all costs” towards revenue durability and unit economics.

  This session will introduce CBCV by first showing how it fits within traditional valuation approaches, then applying it to several publicly traded companies. These examples highlight the growing ability of CBCV to move markets, making it a crucially important methodology for executives and investors to understand and utilize.

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