Integrating the customer equity and brand equity approaches to the financial value of marketing

There are two approaches to treating marketing expenditures, not as a cost to be expensed, but as an investment in a financial asset. The customer equity (CE) approach views customer relationships as generating future returns and uses customer lifetime value (CLV) models. The brand equity approach (BE) views brands as creating future returns and uses measures of the financial value of brand (FVB). Although some CE research has introduced brands as one driver of CLV, the two approaches diverge in important ways. This paper identifies key differences between them and proposes two ways the CE and BE perspectives could be integrated into a common approach. One way is to distinguish between brand relationships and calculative relationships in building CLV models. Another is to triangulate measures of FVB with CLV measures.