The Impact of Goal Enabling Technology Adoption on Customer Lifetime Value
(A2022-106499)

AUTHORS

Jake An, UNSW Sydney; Andre Bonfrer; Christine Eckert, University of Technology Sydney

ABSTRACT

Service providers offer goal enabling technologies (GETs) to become more customer-centric. The popularity of GETs is based on the assumption that enabling customers to set service specic goals can improve both the service's value to the customer and the customer's value to the service. We use panel data from an investment services provider that introduced a GET to examine how customers who adopted GETs changed their behavior and customer lifetime value. The results based on a synthetic control matching method indicate that the introduction of GET increases customers' goal-congruent behavior which in turn improves customer lifetime value. The impact of GETs thereby depends on several goal characteristics, namely customers' perceived goal attainment diffculty, motivation, and commitment at the time of goal setting. An inverted U-shape for each of these goal characteristics is identied, allowing practitioners to personalize goals to optimize performance for customers and firms.