A relatively small number of purchase and return metrics can accurately predict customer profitability — and the likelihood of policy abuse. By using analytics to identify the few customers who cost the company the most money by abusing return policies before they make their next purchase, companies can prevent abusive returns, avoid PR disasters, and boost their profitability.

When a corporate culture is designed not just to encourage innovation but to systematically nurture employee ideas, the results are dramatic: The companies that have the greatest level of participation have the best ideas. They’ve also got the strongest profit growth. All this stems from a culture that recognizes that effective innovations can come from anyone, at any level in the organization.

Many of today’s most successful companies are able to leverage business model scalability to achieve profitable growth. Executives need to factor scalability attributes into their business model design or they risk being left behind.

Many companies’ decisions about share repurchases are handled mainly by management rather than boards — with repercussions for capital allocation. Boards should carefully balance the capital needed for repurchases against its use in value creation via internal development or external acquisitions — and be skeptical of repurchase programs financed by debt rather than profits.

Accelerating compression of both revenues and profits may rapidly prove fatal to traditional businesses. Consider the accelerating decline of voice calls as a means of communicating via mobile telephone: From 2013 to 2015, average mobile voice revenue per user declined globally by 19%, and a further decline of 26% is expected through 2020. To stave off disaster, incumbents must transform and renew their core operations — while also growing into new businesses and industries.

A key finding from the 2014 social business research report by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte indicates that company values increase as “social maturity” increases. To advance in social maturity, companies should: 1) use social data to better advantage; 2) provide leadership vision for social; and 3) infuse social across the enterprise. An infographic illustrates the value derived from social, and the way socially mature companies outperform others in key areas.

Many customers are simply not profitable. Letting them go is one option, but so is trying to train them out of expensive behavior. Options suggested by Jiwoong Shin and K. Sudhir, both of Yale School of Management, include reducing services to unprofitable customers and educating them to use less costly service channels. “We recognize the mix of concerns, both ethical and practical, that swirl around firing customers,” write Shin and Sudhir. “We advocate firing customers only as a last resort.”

Companies differ in their approaches to price setting, but most fall into one of three buckets: cost-based, competition-based or customer value-based. Customer value-based pricing uses data on the perceived customer value of the product as the main factor to determine prices.

However, implementing customer value-based pricing is not easy. Developing a customer value-based pricing program is a multiyear project demanding executive attention and requiring substantial changes in corporate processes.

New research finds that investments companies make in information technology increase profitability and sales more than investments in advertising or R&D do.

Certain types of marketing techniques — those aimed at increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) — can be linked to stock price increases.

More and more companies are now able to change their prices in real time to capture the full possible value of goods and services. Here’s how to do dynamic pricing right.

Most managers will tend to believe the “facts” that fit their views, even when faced with conflicting information or even outright contradiction.

Companies should spend less time trying to fool customers with hidden charges and devote more effort to competing on differences that really matter, say the authors. Imaginative managers may want to consider how a move toward honest pricing in their industry — such as unit pricing at supermarkets and the U.S. government”s Energy Star program — could help sell more and better products to a loyal customer base.

Companies must move beyond merely fixing what has “gone wrong” to developing what will “go right” by refocusing on the actual customer experience.

How a paper mill used price-based concepts as part of a strategy to reduce cost and regain profitability.

A three-step process to ensure that companies launch new products that make a profit and please customers.

On the basis of research into 100 enterprises, the authors developed a helpful strategic tool, the Delta Model. Companies using the framework define strategic positions that reflect new sources of profitability, align the strategic options with their activities, and establish processes that adapt well to change. The researchers outline practical mechanisms for obtaining feedback from the adaptive processes, and they offer critical metrics to track performance.

A combination of efforts — technology licensing, defense of intellectual property, and judicious partnerships —helped firms protect profits and remain competitive.