Customer relationship management (CRM) is perceived to be failing, and there is an urgent need for some practical ways to address this issue. The research presented in this article demonstrates that the implementation of CRM activities delivers greater profits. Using calculations of the lifetime value of customers in two longitudinal case studies, the research finds that customer management strategies change as more is discovered about the value of the customer. These changes lead to better firm performance. The contribution of this article is to show that CRM works and that a relatively straightforward analysis of the value of the customer can make a real difference.

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In the last few years there has emerged a strongly held view that the ultimate purpose of the firm is to maximize shareholder value, that is the long run worth of the business to its owners. Many influences clearly impact upon shareholder value, but there is a growing recognition that the supply chain strategy employed by the firm can have a significant effect. This paper examines the concept of shareholder value and the related organizational framework of Value Based Management (VBM) and explores the connections with supply chain strategy.

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F or most of its 30-year history, the description of our discipline as "supply chain management" has tended to encourage a supply-focused viewpoint in which production push rather than demand pull is the dominant logic. We argue the emerging case for demand chain management, in which new manufacturing techniques (such as additive manufacturing) and enhanced information flows (big data) enable our supply chains to run, concurrently, with lower inventory and fast customer response. Remodeling our supply chains into demand chains creates the possibility that waste and obsolescence can be reduced; companies in this world will not create demand unless they can supply it. Increasingly, demand chains that exhibit both lean and agile characteristics ("leagile") will challenge the received wisdom of lean versus agile. We explore some antecedents for the development of demand chains, the implications for the relationship between marketing and supply chain management in organizations, and the consequences for academic discourse-both research and teaching-in these two fields. In particular, we argue that offerings such as Rolls-Royce's TotalCareâ challenge siloed academic perspectives, and we formulate a cross-functional research agenda to examine a number of these boundary-spanning practices.