IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormksc/v40y2021i4p783-809.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Role of Time-Varying Contextual Factors in Latent Attrition Models for Customer Base Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Bachmann

    (University Research Priority Program Social Networks, University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland)

  • Markus Meierer

    (University Research Priority Program Social Networks, University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland)

  • Jeffrey Näf

    (Department of Mathematics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland)

Abstract

Customer base analysis of noncontractual businesses builds on modeling purchases and latent attrition. With the Pareto/NBD model, this has become a straightforward exercise. However, this simplicity comes at a price. Customer-level predictions often lack precision. This issue can be addressed by acknowledging the importance of contextual factors for customer behavior. Considering contextual factors might contribute in two ways: (1) by increasing predictive accuracy and (2) by identifying the impact of these determinants on the purchase and attrition process. However, there is no generalization of the Pareto/NBD model that incorporates time-varying contextual factors. Preserving a closed-form maximum likelihood solution, this study proposes an extension that facilitates modeling time-invariant and time-varying contextual factors in continuous noncontractual settings. These contextual factors can influence the purchase process, the attrition process, or both. The authors further illustrate how to control for endogenous contextual factors. Benchmarking with three data sets from the retailing industry shows that explicitly modeling time-varying contextual factors significantly improves the accuracy of out-of-sample predictions for future purchases and latent attrition.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Bachmann & Markus Meierer & Jeffrey Näf, 2021. "The Role of Time-Varying Contextual Factors in Latent Attrition Models for Customer Base Analysis," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(4), pages 783-809, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:40:y:2021:i:4:p:783-809
    DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2020.1254
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2020.1254
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mksc.2020.1254?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David C. Schmittlein & Albert C. Bemmaor & Donald G. Morrison, 1985. "Technical Note—Why Does the NBD Model Work? Robustness in Representing Product Purchases, Brand Purchases and Imperfectly Recorded Purchases," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(3), pages 255-266.
    2. Oded Netzer & James M. Lattin & V. Srinivasan, 2008. "A Hidden Markov Model of Customer Relationship Dynamics," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 185-204, 03-04.
    3. Yao Zhang & Eric T. Bradlow & Dylan S. Small, 2015. "Predicting Customer Value Using Clumpiness: From RFM to RFMC," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 195-208, March.
    4. Feihong Xia & Rabikar Chatterjee & Jerrold H. May, 2019. "Using Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machines to Model Complex Consumer Shopping Patterns," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(4), pages 711-727, July.
    5. Abel P. Jeuland & Frank M. Bass & Gordon P. Wright, 1980. "A Multibrand Stochastic Model Compounding Heterogeneous Erlang Timing and Multinomial Choice Processes," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(2), pages 255-277, April.
    6. Makoto Abe, 2009. "“Counting Your Customers” One by One: A Hierarchical Bayes Extension to the Pareto/NBD Model," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(3), pages 541-553, 05-06.
    7. Jian Ni & Scott A. Neslin & Baohong Sun, 2012. "Database Submission--The ISMS Durable Goods Data Sets," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 1008-1013, November.
    8. Schröder, Nadine & Hruschka, Harald, 2016. "Investigating the effects of mailing variables and endogeneity on mailing decisions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(2), pages 579-589.
    9. Hruschka, Harald, 2010. "Considering endogeneity for optimal catalog allocation in direct marketing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 206(1), pages 239-247, October.
    10. van Oest, Rutger & Knox, George, 2011. "Extending the BG/NBD: A simple model of purchases and complaints," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 30-37.
    11. Rivers, Douglas & Vuong, Quang H., 1988. "Limited information estimators and exogeneity tests for simultaneous probit models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 347-366, November.
    12. Peter S. Fader & Bruce G. S. Hardie & Jen Shang, 2010. "Customer-Base Analysis in a Discrete-Time Noncontractual Setting," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1086-1108, 11-12.
    13. Glady, Nicolas & Lemmens, Aurélie & Croux, Christophe, 2015. "Unveiling the relationship between the transaction timing, spending and dropout behavior of customers," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 78-93.
    14. David A. Schweidel & George Knox, 2013. "Incorporating Direct Marketing Activity into Latent Attrition Models," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 471-487, May.
    15. Peter Ebbes & Dominik Papies & Harald J. van Heerde, 2011. "The Sense and Non-Sense of Holdout Sample Validation in the Presence of Endogeneity," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(6), pages 1115-1122, November.
    16. repec:tiu:tiutis:52e91e47-4a2d-4e7b-bb23-3926b842ae30 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Michael Platzer & Thomas Reutterer, 2016. "Ticking Away the Moments: Timing Regularity Helps to Better Predict Customer Activity," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(5), pages 779-799, September.
    18. Sungho Park & Sachin Gupta, 2012. "Handling Endogenous Regressors by Joint Estimation Using Copulas," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 567-586, July.
    19. Kinshuk Jerath & Peter S. Fader & Bruce G. S. Hardie, 2011. "New Perspectives on Customer "Death" Using a Generalization of the Pareto/NBD Model," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(5), pages 866-880, September.
    20. Siddharth Singh & Sharad Borle & Dipak Jain, 2009. "A generalized framework for estimating customer lifetime value when customer lifetimes are not observed," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 181-205, June.
    21. Ryan Dew & Asim Ansari, 2018. "Bayesian Nonparametric Customer Base Analysis with Model-Based Visualizations," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(2), pages 216-235, March.
    22. David C. Schmittlein & Donald G. Morrison & Richard Colombo, 1987. "Counting Your Customers: Who-Are They and What Will They Do Next?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 1-24, January.
    23. Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2015. "Control Function Methods in Applied Econometrics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 420-445.
    24. David C. Schmittlein & Robert A. Peterson, 1994. "Customer Base Analysis: An Industrial Purchase Process Application," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(1), pages 41-67.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tudoran, Ana Alina & Hjerrild Thomsen, Charlotte & Thomasen, Sophie, 2024. "Understanding consumer behavior during and after a Pandemic: Implications for customer lifetime value prediction models," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    2. Valentini, Tony & Roederer, Claire & Castéran, Herbert, 2024. "From redesign to revenue: Measuring the effects of servicescape remodeling on customer lifetime value," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Valendin, Jan & Reutterer, Thomas & Platzer, Michael & Kalcher, Klaudius, 2022. "Customer base analysis with recurrent neural networks," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 988-1018.
    2. Michael Platzer & Thomas Reutterer, 2016. "Ticking Away the Moments: Timing Regularity Helps to Better Predict Customer Activity," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(5), pages 779-799, September.
    3. Chou, Ping & Chuang, Howard Hao-Chun & Chou, Yen-Chun & Liang, Ting-Peng, 2022. "Predictive analytics for customer repurchase: Interdisciplinary integration of buy till you die modeling and machine learning," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 296(2), pages 635-651.
    4. Park, Chang Hee & Park, Young-Hoon & Schweidel, David A., 2014. "A multi-category customer base analysis," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 266-279.
    5. David A. Schweidel & George Knox, 2013. "Incorporating Direct Marketing Activity into Latent Attrition Models," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 471-487, May.
    6. Jerath, Kinshuk & Fader, Peter S. & Hardie, Bruce G.S., 2016. "Customer-base analysis using repeated cross-sectional summary (RCSS) data," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(1), pages 340-350.
    7. David A. Schweidel & Young-Hoon Park & Zainab Jamal, 2014. "A Multiactivity Latent Attrition Model for Customer Base Analysis," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 273-286, March.
    8. Romero, Jaime & van der Lans, Ralf & Wierenga, Berend, 2013. "A Partially Hidden Markov Model of Customer Dynamics for CLV Measurement," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 185-208.
    9. Glady, Nicolas & Lemmens, Aurélie & Croux, Christophe, 2015. "Unveiling the relationship between the transaction timing, spending and dropout behavior of customers," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 78-93.
    10. repec:tiu:tiutis:52e91e47-4a2d-4e7b-bb23-3926b842ae30 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Arun Gopalakrishnan & Eric T. Bradlow & Peter S. Fader, 2017. "A Cross-Cohort Changepoint Model for Customer-Base Analysis," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(2), pages 195-213, March.
    12. Reutterer, Thomas & Platzer, Michael & Schröder, Nadine, 2021. "Leveraging purchase regularity for predicting customer behavior the easy way," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 194-215.
    13. Lydia Simon & Jost Adler, 2022. "Worth the effort? Comparison of different MCMC algorithms for estimating the Pareto/NBD model," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(4), pages 707-733, May.
    14. Kinshuk Jerath & Peter S. Fader & Bruce G. S. Hardie, 2011. "New Perspectives on Customer "Death" Using a Generalization of the Pareto/NBD Model," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(5), pages 866-880, September.
    15. Peter S. Fader & Bruce G. S. Hardie & Jen Shang, 2010. "Customer-Base Analysis in a Discrete-Time Noncontractual Setting," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1086-1108, 11-12.
    16. Makoto Abe, 2015. "Deriving Customer Lifetime Value from RFM Measures:Insights into Customer Retention and Acquisition," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-962, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    17. Shaohui Ma & Joachim Büschken, 2011. "Counting your customers from an “always a share” perspective," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 243-257, September.
    18. Eva Ascarza & Oded Netzer & Bruce G. S. Hardie, 2018. "Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(1), pages 54-77, January.
    19. Aurélie Lemmens & Sunil Gupta, 2020. "Managing Churn to Maximize Profits," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(5), pages 956-973, September.
    20. Juha Karvanen & Ari Rantanen & Lasse Luoma, 2014. "Survey data and Bayesian analysis: a cost-efficient way to estimate customer equity," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 305-329, September.
    21. Albert C. Bemmaor & Nicolas Glady, 2012. "Modeling Purchasing Behavior with Sudden "Death": A Flexible Customer Lifetime Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(5), pages 1012-1021, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:40:y:2021:i:4:p:783-809. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.