Target the ego or target the group: evidence from a randomized experiment in proactive churn management

Miguel Godinho de Matos*, Pedro Ferreira, Rodrigo Belo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)
32 Downloads

Abstract

We propose a new strategy for proactive churn management that actively uses social network information to help retain consumers. We collaborate with a major telecommunications provider to design, deploy, and analyze the outcomes of a randomized control trial at the household level to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy. A random subset of likely churners were selected to be called by the firm. We also randomly selected whether their friends would be called. We find that listing likely churners to be called reduced their propensity to churn by 1.9 percentage points from a baseline of 17.2%. When their friends were also listed to be called, their likelihood of churn reduced an additional 1.3 percentage points. The client lifetime value of likely churners increased 2.1% with traditional proactive churn management, and this statistic becomes 6.4% when their friends were also listed to be called by the firm. We show that, in our setting, likely churners receive a signal from their friends that reduces churn among the former. We also discuss how this signal may trigger mechanisms akin to both financial comparisons and conformity that may explain our findings.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)793-811
Number of pages19
JournalMarketing Science
Volume37
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2018

Keywords

  • Churn management
  • Client lifetime value
  • Randomized experiment
  • Social networks

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