The customer lifetime value, variously abbreviated as CLV or CLTV and also called lifetime customer value (LCV) as well as lifetime value (LTV), has become an important customer metric for businesses since its introduction in the late 1980s. In concept, the CLV is a predictive measure of the expected revenue or profit for a customer or group of customers over the entire lifespan of their relationship with a business.
While there is no universal methodology by which the CLV is constructed, at least there are not any approved by the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB), this has not stopped the CLV from becoming widely adopted by Fortune 500 firms and other businesses. The reason for this is that the CLV confers a number of benefits including the ability to estimate, analyze, and/or justify customer acquisition/marketing strategies...