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A methodology for classification and validation of customer datasets

Nie, Dongyun orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-3109-5762, Cappellari, Paolo and Roantree, Mark orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-1329-2570 (2020) A methodology for classification and validation of customer datasets. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 36 (5). pp. 821-833. ISSN 0885-8624

Abstract
Purpose- The purpose of this research is to develop a method to classify customers according to their value to an organization. This process is complicated by the disconnected nature of a customer record in an industry such as insurance. With large numbers of customers, it is of significant benefit to managers and company analysts to create a broad classification for all customers. Design/Methodology/Approach- The initial step is to construct a full customer history and extract a feature set suited to Customer Lifetime Value calculations. This feature set must then be validated to determine its ability to classify customers in broad terms. Findings- Our method successfully classifies customer datasets with an accuracy of 90%. We also discovered that by examining the average value for key variables in each customer segment, an algorithm can label the group of clusters with an accuracy of 99.3%. Research limitations/implications- Working with a real-world dataset, it is always the case that some features are unavailable as they were never recorded. This can impair the algorithm’s ability to make good classifications in all cases. Originality/Value- We believe that this research makes a novel contribution as it automates the classification of customers but in addition, our approach provides a high level classification result (recall and precision identifies the best cluster configuration) and detailed insights into how each customer is classified by two validation metrics. This supports managers in terms of market spend on new and existing customers.
Metadata
Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Segmentation; Clustering; Unsupervised Learning
Subjects:Business > Marketing
Business > Consumer behaviour
Computer Science > Machine learning
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Computing
Research Initiatives and Centres > INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics
Publisher:Emerald
Official URL:https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-02-2020-0077
Copyright Information:© 2020 Emerald Publishing
Funders:Science Foundation Ireland under grant numbers: SFI/12/RC/2289 and SFI/12/RC/2289-P2.
ID Code:27685
Deposited On:08 Sep 2022 11:49 by Dongyun Nie . Last Modified 08 Sep 2022 11:49
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