Skimming from the bottom: Empirical evidence of adverse selection when poaching customers Przemys law Jeziorski∗ Elena Krasnokutskayay Olivia Ceccariniz January 22, 2018 Abstract This paper studies implications of competitive customer poaching in markets with het- erogeneous and privately known costs to serve. Using individual-level driving records from a large car insurer in Portugal, we show that poached customers generate 21% higher cost to serve than observationally equivalent own customers. Screening on all available consumer characteristics and behavioral variables, with the exception of switching behavior, can only alleviate 50% of adverse selection. We develop and estimate an empirical framework based on a dynamic churn model that rationalizes this adverse selection. Our estimates imply that risky customers have more incentive to search and switch, and that the population of switch- ers is itself heterogeneous in riskiness. We propose a new Consumer Lifetime Value measure that accounts for switchers' risk endogeneity. We apply this measure to study actuarial pricing and insurance contract design. Keywords: customer poaching, adverse selection, unobserved heterogeneity, cost to serve, behavior-based pricing, structural model ∗Corresponding author. University of California at Berkeley;
[email protected], 2220 Piedmont Ave, Berkeley CA 94720, USA yJohns Hopkins University;
[email protected], Wyman Park Building 555, 3400 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA zPorto Business School;
[email protected], Avenida Fabril do Norte 425, 4460-312 Matosinhos, Portugal 1 2 1 Introduction In many industries consumers are differentially expensive to serve. A canonical example is provided by insurance markets, where consumers differ by their inherent riskiness. However, differential cost to serve is present in many other industries, such as credit markets, services and retail.