TY - JOUR AB - Purpose For classification problems of customer relationship management (CRM), the purpose of this paper is to propose a method with interpretability of the classification results that combines multiple decision trees based on a genetic algorithm.Design/methodology/approach In the proposed method, multiple decision trees are combined in parallel. Subsequently, a genetic algorithm is used to optimize the weight matrix in the combination algorithm.Findings The method is applied to customer credit rating assessment and customer response behavior pattern recognition. The results demonstrate that compared to a single decision tree, the proposed combination method improves the predictive accuracy and optimizes the classification rules, while maintaining interpretability of the classification results.Originality/value The findings of this study contribute to research methodologies in CRM. It specifically focuses on a new method with interpretability by combining multiple decision trees based on genetic algorithms for customer classification. VL - 32 IS - 5 SN - 1355-5855 DO - 10.1108/APJML-03-2019-0125 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-03-2019-0125 AU - Zhang Zhe AU - Dai Yue PY - 2019 Y1 - 2019/01/01 TI - Combination classification method for customer relationship management T2 - Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 1004 EP - 1022 Y2 - 2024/04/19 ER -