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Article
Publication date: 28 August 2018

Wen-Yu Chiang

Online customer relationship management (CRM) is an important issue for implementing digital marketing of electronic commerce or social commerce. The purpose of this study is to…

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Abstract

Purpose

Online customer relationship management (CRM) is an important issue for implementing digital marketing of electronic commerce or social commerce. The purpose of this study is to establish valuable markets for discovering customer knowledge from data-driven CRM systems for enhancing growth rates of businesses. Airline or travel agency industries are online businesses in the world. Therefore, the industries in Taiwan will be an empirical case for this study.

Design/methodology/approach

This research applied a procedure with an applied proposed model for establishing valuable markets from data-driven CRM systems. However, the study used a proposed customer value model (recency, frequency and monetary [RFM]; RFM model-based), the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) procedure and a proposed equation for estimating customer values.

Findings

For enhancing the data-driven CRM marketing of the industries, in this research, the market of air travelers can be partitioned into eight markets by the proposed model. As well, the markets can be ranked by the AHP procedure. Furthermore, the travelers’ customer values can be estimated by a proposed customer value equation.

Originality/value

Via the applied proposed procedure, online airlines, travel agencies or other online businesses can implement the research procedure as their data-driven marketing strategy on their online large-scale or Big Data customers’ databases for enhancing sales rates.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 48 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 May 2018

Gianfranco Walsh, Mario Schaarschmidt and Stefan Ivens

Service providers leverage their corporate reputation management efforts to increase revenues by shaping customer attitudes and behaviours, yet the effects on customer innovation…

1192

Abstract

Purpose

Service providers leverage their corporate reputation management efforts to increase revenues by shaping customer attitudes and behaviours, yet the effects on customer innovation adoption and customer value remain unclear. In an extended conceptualisation of customer-based corporate reputation (CBR), the purpose of this paper is to propose that customer perceived risk, perceived value, and service separation are contingencies of the relationship between CBR and two key customer outcomes: customer new product adoption proneness (CPA) and recency-frequency-monetary (RFM) value.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a predictive survey approach, 1,001 service customers assess the online or offline operations of six multichannel retailers. The hypothesised model is tested using structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis.

Findings

The analysis reveals significant linkages of CBR with perceived risk and perceived value, as well as between perceived risk and perceived value and from perceived value to CPA and RFM value. These linkages vary in strength across unseparated (offline) and separated (online) services.

Research limitations/implications

This study uses cross-sectional data to contribute to literature that relates CBR to relevant customer outcomes by considering CPA and RFM value and investigating contingent factors. It provides conceptual and empirical evidence that price appropriateness represents a new CBR dimension.

Practical implications

The results reveal that CBR reduces customers’ perceived risk and positively affects their perceived value, which drives CPA and RFM value. Multichannel retailers can create rewarding customer relationships by building and nurturing good reputations.

Originality/value

This study is the first to link CBR with customer product adoption proneness and value, two important customer measures. It proposes and tests an extended conceptualisation of CBR.

Article
Publication date: 1 August 2016

Peiman Alipour Sarvari, Alp Ustundag and Hidayet Takci

The purpose of this paper is to determine the best approach to customer segmentation and to extrapolate associated rules for this based on recency, frequency and monetary (RFM

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to determine the best approach to customer segmentation and to extrapolate associated rules for this based on recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) considerations as well as demographic factors. In this study, the impacts of RFM and demographic attributes have been challenged in order to enrich factors that lend comprehension to customer segmentation. Different types of scenario were designed, performed and evaluated meticulously under uniform test conditions. The data for this study were extracted from the database of a global pizza restaurant chain in Turkey. This paper summarizes the findings of the study and also provides evidence of its empirical implications to improve the performance of customer segmentation as well as achieving extracted rule perfection via effective model factors and variations. Accordingly, marketing and service processes will work more effectively and efficiently for customers and society. The implication of this study is that it explains a clear concept for interaction between producers and consumers.

Design/methodology/approach

Customer relationship management, which aims to manage record and evaluate customer interactions, is generally regarded as a vital tool for companies that wish to be successful in the rapidly changing global market. The prediction of customer behaviors is a strategically important and difficult issue because of the high variance and wide range of customer orders and preferences. So to have an effective tool for extracting rules based on customer purchasing behavior, considering tangible and intangible criteria is highly important. To overcome the challenges imposed by the multifaceted nature of this problem, the authors utilized artificial intelligence methods, including k-means clustering, Apriori association rule mining (ARM) and neural networks. The main idea was that customer clusters are better enhanced when segmentation processes are based on RFM analysis accompanied by demographic data. Weighted RFM (WRFM) and unweighted RFM values/scores were applied with and without demographic factors and utilized to compose different types and numbers of clusters. The Apriori algorithm was used to extract rules of association. The performance analyses of scenarios have been conducted based on these extracted rules. The number of rules, elapsed time and prediction accuracy were used to evaluate the different scenarios. The results of evaluations were compared with the outputs of another available technique.

Findings

The results showed that having an appropriate segmentation approach is vital if there are to be strong association rules. Also, it has been determined from the results that the weights of RFM attributes affect rule association performance positively. Moreover, to capture more accurate customer segments, a combination of RFM and demographic attributes is recommended for clustering. The results’ analyses indicate the undeniable importance of demographic data merged with WRFM. Above all, this challenge introduced the best possible sequence of factors for an analysis of clustering and ARM based on RFM and demographic data.

Originality/value

The work compared k-means and Kohonen clustering methods in its segmentation phase to prove the superiority of adopted segmentation techniques. In addition, this study indicated that customer segments containing WRFM scores and demographic data in the same clusters brought about stronger and more accurate association rules for the understanding of customer behavior. These so-called achievements were compared with the results of classical approaches in order to support the credibility of the proposed methodology. Based on previous works, classical methods for customer segmentation have overlooked any combination of demographic data with WRFM during clustering before proceeding to their rule extraction stages.

Article
Publication date: 12 October 2012

Wen‐Yu Chiang

The purpose of this paper is to establish customers’ markets and rules of dynamic customer relationship management (CRM) systems for online retailers.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to establish customers’ markets and rules of dynamic customer relationship management (CRM) systems for online retailers.

Design/methodology/approach

This research proposes a procedure to discover customers’ markets and rules, which adopts the recency, frequency, monetary value (RFM) variables, transaction records, and socioeconomic data of the online shoppers to be the research variables. The research methods aim at the supervised apriori algorithm, C5.0 decision tree algorithm, and RFM model.

Findings

This research discovered eight RFM markets and six rules of online retailers.

Practical implications

The proposed framework and research results can help retailer managers to retain and expand high value markets via their dynamic CRM and POS systems.

Originality/value

This research uses data mining technologies to extract high value markets and rules for marketing plans. The research variables are easy to obtain via retailers’ systems. The found customer values, RFM markets, shopping association rules, and marketing decision rules can be discovered via the framework of this research.

Article
Publication date: 31 May 2022

Jianfang Qi, Yue Li, Haibin Jin, Jianying Feng and Weisong Mu

The purpose of this study is to propose a new consumer value segmentation method for low-dimensional dense market datasets to quickly detect and cluster the most profitable…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to propose a new consumer value segmentation method for low-dimensional dense market datasets to quickly detect and cluster the most profitable customers for the enterprises.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, the comprehensive segmentation bases (CSB) with richer meanings were obtained by introducing the weighted recency-frequency-monetary (RFM) model into the common segmentation bases (SB). Further, a new market segmentation method, the CSB-MBK algorithm was proposed by integrating the CSB model and the mini-batch k-means (MBK) clustering algorithm.

Findings

The results show that our proposed CSB model can reflect consumers' contributions to a market, as well as improve the clustering performance. Moreover, the proposed CSB-MBK algorithm is demonstrably superior to the SB-MBK, CSB-KMA and CSB-Chameleon algorithms with respect to the Silhouette Coefficient (SC), the Calinski-Harabasz (CH) Index , the average running time and superior to the SB-MBK, RFM-MBK and WRFM-MBK algorithms in terms of the inter-market value and characteristic differentiation.

Practical implications

This paper provides a tool for decision-makers and marketers to segment a market quickly, which can help them grasp consumers' activity, loyalty, purchasing power and other characteristics in a target market timely and achieve the precision marketing.

Originality/value

This study is the first to introduce the CSB-MBK algorithm for identifying valuable customers through the comprehensive consideration of the clustering quality, consumer value and segmentation speed. Moreover, the CSB-MBK algorithm can be considered for applications in other markets.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 52 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 4 December 2020

Irem Ucal Sari, Duygu Sergi and Burcu Ozkan

Customer segmentation is an important research area that helps organizations to improve their services according to customer needs. With the increased information that shows…

Abstract

Customer segmentation is an important research area that helps organizations to improve their services according to customer needs. With the increased information that shows customer attitudes, it is much easier and also more necessary than before to analyze customer responses on different campaigns. Recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) analysis allows us to segment customers according to their common features. In this chapter, customer segmentation and RFM analysis are explained first, then a real case application of RFM analysis on customer segmentation for a Fuel company is presented. At the end of the application part, possible strategies for the company are generated.

Details

Application of Big Data and Business Analytics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-884-2

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 29 October 2019

Yongkil Ahn, Dongyeon Kim and Dong-Joo Lee

The purpose of this paper is to identify the attributes that predict customer attrition behavior in the brokerage and investment banking sectors.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify the attributes that predict customer attrition behavior in the brokerage and investment banking sectors.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors analyze the complete stock trading records and customer profiles of 458,098 retail customers from a Korean brokerage house. The authors develop customer attrition prediction models and further explore the practicality of these models using statistical classification techniques.

Findings

The results from three different binary selection models indicate that customer transaction patterns effectively explain the attrition of active retail customers in subsequent periods. The study results demonstrate that monetary value variables are the most critical for predicting customer attrition in the securities industry.

Research limitations/implications

This study contributes to the customer attrition literature by documenting the first large-scale field-based evidence that confirms the practicality of the canonical recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) framework in the investment banking and brokerage industry. The findings advance previous survey-based studies in the financial services industry by identifying the attributes that predict customer attrition behaviors in the securities industry.

Practical implications

The outcomes can be easily operationalized for attrition prediction by practitioners in financial service firms. Moreover, the ex post density of inactive customers in the top 10 percent most-likely-to-churn group is estimated to be five to six times the ex ante unconditional attrition ratio, which ascertains that the attributes recognized in this study work well for the purpose of target marketing.

Originality/value

While the securities industry is regarded as one of the most information-intensive industries, detailed empirical investigation into customer attrition in the field has lagged behind partly due to the lack of suitable securities transaction data and demographic information at the customer level. The current research fills this gap in the literature by taking advantage of a large-scale field data set and offers a starting point for more elaborate studies on the drivers of customer attrition in the financial services sector.

Details

International Journal of Bank Marketing, vol. 38 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-2323

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 June 2016

Seyed Mahdi Rezaeinia and Rouhollah Rahmani

Recommender systems are techniques that allow companies to develop sales and marketing and as a result, attract more customers. There are several different types of recommender…

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Abstract

Purpose

Recommender systems are techniques that allow companies to develop sales and marketing and as a result, attract more customers. There are several different types of recommender systems which collaborative filtering (CF) method is more popular and is used in various fields. However, similar to other recommender systems, this system has its own limitations. Nowadays, recommender systems are combined with other systems to enhance the quality and precision. The purpose of this paper is to present a new method to increase the accuracy and quality of recommendations associated with filtering systems.

Design/methodology/approach

First, the recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) variables of the clients are extracted and variables’ weights are calculated. Then, using weighted RFM and expectation maximization clustering algorithms and their combination with the closest K-neighbors, recommendations for each cluster is independently extracted. Finally, the results are compared with the outcome of conventional CF techniques. Remarkably, sale transactions of a big distribution and sale of goods centers are used in this study.

Findings

The results indicated that the proposed method has higher accuracy compared to the conventional CF method. Likewise, the clusters which have higher values were received more accurate recommendations. Another point was that the proposed method was faster on obtaining the results than the conventional method as the recommendations were performed with respect to the customers of the same cluster, while all clients were assessed in the conventional method and as a result, the calculation speed is reduced as the number of customers increases in this method.

Originality/value

The results indicated that the proposed method has higher accuracy compared to the conventional CF method. Likewise, the clusters which have higher values were received more accurate recommendations. This is very important for businesses and trade centers as more than 80 percent of their profits come from valued customers and hence, recommendations with higher accuracy to these valued customers lead to more profits to sales centers. Since the valued customers were calculated in the proposed method and the value of each customer was distinguished for sales representatives, the accomplished recommendations can be coordinated with sales’ strategies to make it more targeted.

Article
Publication date: 13 July 2015

Hülya Güçdemir and Hasan Selim

– The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic approach for business customer segmentation.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic approach for business customer segmentation.

Design/methodology/approach

This study proposes an approach for business customer segmentation that integrates clustering and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM). First, proper segmentation variables are identified and then customers are grouped by using hierarchical and partitional clustering algorithms. The approach extended the recency-frequency-monetary (RFM) model by proposing five novel segmentation variables for business markets. To confirm the viability of the proposed approach, a real-world application is presented. Three agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms namely “Ward’s method,” “single linkage” and “complete linkage,” and a partitional clustering algorithm, “k-means,” are used in segmentation. In the implementation, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is employed to determine the importance of the segments.

Findings

Business customers of an international original equipment manufacturer (OEM) are segmented in the application. In this regard, 317 business customers of the OEM are segmented as “best,” “valuable,” “average,” “potential valuable” and “potential invaluable” according to the cluster ranks obtained in this study. The results of the application reveal that the proposed approach can effectively be used in practice for business customer segmentation.

Research limitations/implications

The success of the proposed approach relies on the availability and quality of customers’ data. Therefore, design of an extensive customer database management system is the foundation for any successful customer relationship management (CRM) solution offered by the proposed approach. Such a database management system may entail a noteworthy level of investment.

Practical implications

The results of the application reveal that the proposed approach can effectively be used in practice for business customer segmentation. By making customer segmentation decisions, the proposed approach can provides firms a basis for the development of effective loyalty programs and design of customized strategies for their customers.

Social implications

The proposed segmentation approach may contribute firms to gaining sustainable competitive advantage in the market by increasing the effectiveness of CRM strategies.

Originality/value

This study proposes an integrated approach for business customer segmentation. The proposed approach differentiates itself from its counterparts by combining MCDM and clustering in business customer segmentation. In addition, it extends the traditional RFM model by including five novel segmentation variables for business markets.

Details

Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 115 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-5577

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2016

Cheng-Hsiung Weng

The paper aims to understand the book subscription characteristics of the students at each college and help the library administrators to conduct efficient library management…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to understand the book subscription characteristics of the students at each college and help the library administrators to conduct efficient library management plans for books in the library. Unlike the traditional association rule mining (ARM) techniques which mine patterns from a single data set, this paper proposes a model, recency-frequency-college (RFC) model, to analyse book subscription characteristics of library users and then discovers interesting association rules from equivalence-class RFC segments.

Design/methodology/approach

A framework which integrates the RFC model and ARM technique is proposed to analyse book subscription characteristics of library users. First, the author applies the RFC model to determine library users’ RFC values. After that, the author clusters library users’ transactions into several RFC segments by their RFC values. Finally, the author discovers RFC association rules and analyses book subscription characteristics of RFC segments (library users).

Findings

The paper provides experimental results from the survey data. It shows that the precision of the frequent itemsets discovered by the proposed RFC model outperforms the traditional approach in predicting library user subscription itemsets in the following time periods. Besides, the proposed approach can discover interesting and valuable patterns from library book circulation transactions.

Research limitations/implications

Because RFC thresholds were assigned based on expert opinion in this paper, it is an acquisition bottleneck. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to automatically infer the RFC thresholds from the library book circulation transactions.

Practical implications

The paper includes implications for the library administrators in conducting library book management plans for different library users.

Originality/value

This paper proposes a model, the RFC model, to analyse book subscription characteristics of library users.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 34 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

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