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臺大管理論叢
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by interviewing the subject companyʼs production, sales, and accounting managers.
3. Findings
The empirical results show that customer average order scale, total annual order
amount, and new product purchase ratio all positively and significantly impact customer
profit contribution, which are consistent with the predictions of H1, H2, and H4 respectively.
Conversely, customer maintenance cost has a negative impact on customer profit
contribution, which supports H3.
4. Research Implications, Originality, and Contribution
This study makes two significant contributions. First of all, most of the customer-profit-
analysis literature uses inductive or deductive reasoning to build a customer profit
contribution model (Mulhern, 1999; Sharma, 2008). Empirical studies that use actual and
customer-specific data to examine the determinants of customer profit contribution are
limited, possibly because most firms classify the data for measuring customer profit
contribution as highly confidential. Therefore, scholars have great difficulty in accessing
actual data. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence of the
determinants of customer profit contribution based on actual customer-level data.
Secondly, this study enhances our understanding of customer profit contribution of
pharmaceutical firms in Taiwan by providing empirical evidence on the determinants of
customer profit contribution of an actual Taiwanese pharmaceutical firm. Our insights on the
determinants of customer profit contribution can help firms improve their operating
performance by adjusting their customer-relation management strategies accordingly. For
example, the subject company can modify its operating strategies to increase its customer
order scale, total annual order amount, and new product purchase ratio to improve its
customer profit contribution and thus its operating performance.
5. Research Limitations
Some limitations should be noted when interpreting our research findings, and based on
these limitations, we discuss some possible research extensions. First of all, this study uses
the case study methodology to examine the determinants of customer profit contribution of a
pharmaceutical firm in Taiwan. Since the size of the case company is relatively small in the
global pharmaceutical industry, the research findings of this paper may not be applicable to