Research Specifications

Nowadays, banks use data mining and business intelligence tools and techniques to analyze their customers’ behavior. Customer segmentation is a widely adopted analytical tool to identify distinct groups of customers. Most studies have adopted a static segmentation approach, leading to missing important trends and patterns. In this study, we propose a framework that represents each customer behavior as a time-series sequence of the Recency, Frequency, and Monetary variables, and then exploits time-series clustering algorithms to carry out customer segmentation. The framework consists of state-of-the-art clustering algorithms, including hierarchical, spectral, and k-shape algorithms to divide customers into homogeneous groups and implement point of sale devices transaction data of grocery and appliance retailers. We divide customers into four segments, analyze the behavioral trends, and provide marketing suggestions for each segment. Our results show that, in terms of the computed validity indices, the best clustering model for grocery retailers is reached using hierarchical clustering with the Complexity-Invariant Distance measure, and for appliance retailers, the best segmentation is achieved by applying the spectral clustering with the Complexity-Invariant Distance measure.