Palm and Sprint should combine to send me a free Pre. Because i’m some big hotshot? No, i’m just an ordinary dude. But i happen to be a an ordinary dude who has owned nearly about every Palm device since the original PDA. And i’ve also been on Sprint from 1998.
But now i’m just not that excited about the new Pre and thinking i might purchase a 3GS iPhone to accompany my blackberry. Doing so would (a) make it likely i never buy another Palm device and (b) migrate me from Sprint.
So if [my lifetime value to palm & sprint > the cost of a Pre] they should give me a device and tell me that it’s mine so long as i sign a two year contract. Instead they keep sending me opportunities to upgrade for $99, which isn’t moving me to action.
I bet neither Palm or Sprint has a system in place to make this sort of calculation. Also curious whether they are working together to identify the intersection of Palm loyalists and Sprint customers, since both of these companies are on the ropes, you imagine they’d want to get creative.
Customer analytics are increasingly sophisticated but still quite immature when you think about realtime optimization and pricing. Still lots of narrow-slicing left to do….