scholarly journals An RFM Model Customizable to Product Catalogues and Marketing Criteria Using Fuzzy Linguistic Models: Case Study of a Retail Business

Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (16) ◽  
pp. 1836
Author(s):  
Rocío G. Martínez ◽  
Ramon A. Carrasco ◽  
Cristina Sanchez-Figueroa ◽  
Diana Gavilan

In the field of strategic marketing, the recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) variables model has been applied for years to determine how solid a database is in terms of spending and customer activity. Retailers almost never obtain data related to their customers beyond their purchase history, and if they do, the information is often out of date. This work presents a new method, based on the fuzzy linguistic 2-tuple model and the definition of product hierarchies, which provides a linguistic interpretability giving business meaning and improving the precision of conventional models. The fuzzy linguistic 2-tuple RFM model, adapted by the product hierarchy thanks to the analytical hierarchical process (AHP), is revealed to be a useful tool for including business criteria, product catalogues and customer insights in the definition of commercial strategies. The result of our method is a complete customer segmentation that enriches the clusters obtained with the traditional fuzzy linguistic 2-tuple RFM model and offers a clear view of customers’ preferences and possible actions to define cross- and up-selling strategies. A real case study based on a worldwide leader in home decoration was developed to guide, step by step, other researchers and marketers. The model was built using the only information that retailers always have: customers’ purchase ticket details.

2019 ◽  
Vol 162 ◽  
pp. 281-289
Author(s):  
Rocío González Martínez ◽  
Ramón Alberto Carrasco ◽  
Jesús García-Madariaga ◽  
Carlos Porcel Gallego ◽  
Enrique Herrera-Viedma

Significant data development has required organizations to use a tool to understand the relationships between data and make various appropriate decisions based on the information obtained. Customer segmentation and analysis of their behavior in the manufacturing and distribution industries according to the purposefulness of marketing activities and effective communication and with customers has a particular importance. Customer segmentation using data mining techniques is mainly based on the variables of recency purchase (R), frequency of purchase (F) and monetary value of purchase (M) in RFM model. In this article, using the mentioned variables, twelve customer groups related to the BTB (business to business) of a food production company, are grouped. The grouping in this study is evaluated based on the K-means algorithm and the Davies-Bouldin index. As a result, customer grouping is divided into three groups and, finally the CLV (customer lifetime value) of each cluster is calculated, and appropriate marketing strategies for each cluster have been proposed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rocio Gonzalez Martinez ◽  
Ramón Carrasco ◽  
Cristina Sanchez Figueroa ◽  
Diana Gavilán

Gaining customer loyalty has become one of the main objectives of all companies. Retailers, especially the online ones, have the advantage of knowing their customers’ historical purchase data, which provides them with an understanding of the customers’ buying patterns. A widely-used tool in strategic marketing and customer loyalty is segmentation based on the traditional Recency, Frequency and Monetary (RFM) model. Subsequently, the fuzzy RFM model proved to be an improvement on the traditional RFM model. There has been a change in the retail customer profile, with the growth of a new cluster, the “One-Shot Customer”, new customers that buy from a retailer just once and never come back. In response to this change, the fuzzy RFM model has been modified to include a new dimension capturing Length or Duration. This study presents the new fuzzy RFMD model (Recency, Frequency, Monetary and Duration model), which can be used to better identify that new, large group of customers. The paper also provides a case study based on an e-commerce clothing retailer. Its customer database was segmented using the k-means algorithm and the Isolation Forest algorithm was applied to identify and correctly treat possible anomalies. The Customer Lifetime Value and the weights for the RFMD attributes were calculated by applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model. Results reveal the improvement that the weighted fuzzy RFMD model offers to retailers, enabling them to detect the One-Shot Customers and thus optimize their strategic marketing plans.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Saida Parvin

Women’s empowerment has been at the centre of research focus for many decades. Extant literature examined the process, outcome and various challenges. Some claimed substantial success, while others contradicted with evidence of failure. But the success remains a matter of debate due to lack of empirical evidence of actual empowerment of women around the world. The current study aimed to address this gap by taking a case study method. The study critically evaluates 20 cases carefully sampled to include representatives from the entire country of Bangladesh. The study demonstrates popular beliefs about microfinance often misguide even the borrowers and they start living in a fabricated feeling of empowerment, facing real challenges to achieve true empowerment in their lives. The impact of this finding is twofold; firstly there is a theoretical contribution, where the definition of women’s empowerment is proposed to be revisited considering findings from these cases. And lastly, the policy makers at governmental and non-governmental organisations, and multinational donor agencies need to revise their assessment tools for funding.


Author(s):  
Michael C. Medlock

This chapter begins with a discussion of the philosophy and then definition of the RITE method. It then delves into the benefits of this method and provides practical notes on running RITE tests effectively. The chapter concludes with an overview of the original case study behind the 2002 article documenting this method.


Author(s):  
Emron Esplin

This essay explores Edgar Allan Poe’s extraordinary relationships with various literary traditions across the globe, posits that Poe is the most influential US writer on the global literary scene, and argues that Poe’s current global reputation relies at least as much on the radiance of the work of Poe’s literary advocates—many of whom are literary stars in their own right—as it does on the brilliance of Poe’s original works. The article briefly examines Poe’s most famous French advocates (Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry); glosses the work of his advocates throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas; and offers a concise case study of Poe’s influence on and advocacy from three twentieth-century writers from the Río de la Plata region of South America (Quiroga, Borges, and Cortázar). The essay concludes by reading the relationships between Poe and his advocates through the ancient definition of astral or stellar influence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4186
Author(s):  
Abdulhakeem Raji ◽  
Abeer Hassan

This paper adopted a case study approach to investigate the sustainability practices of a Scottish university in order to understand if sustainability forms part of its central policy agenda. As such, the paper focuses on the levels of awareness and disclosure of their sustainable practices, measuring the impacts and effectiveness of those initiatives. This paper introduces signaling theory to explore the idea that appropriate communication via integrated thinking can close the gap between the organization and its stakeholders. We believe that the provision of this relevant information will lead to better communication between the organization and its stakeholders, supporting a signaling theory interpretation. Therefore, we are suggesting that integrated thinking is an internal process that organizations can follow to increase the level of disclosure as a communication tool with stakeholders. From the literature reviewed, four themes were identified (definition of university sustainability, sustainability awareness, disclosure framework within universities, and level of accountability). The research adopted a pragmatic view and conducted individual interviews with participants belonging to three stakeholder groups (members of the university’s senior management, the governing council, and the student union executive). Although this study focused on just one Scottish university, it should still provide some insight for the better understanding of the underpinning issues surrounding the sustainability accountability practices of Scottish universities in general. The research findings indicated that the university prioritized only two sustainability dimensions—economic and environmental—and that the university still perceived sustainability as a voluntary exercise. Additionally, it is evident that the university had no framework in place for measuring its sustainability delivery—and therefore had no established medium of communicating these activities to its stakeholders. Moreover, research findings showed that the social and educational context of sustainability was lacking at the university. The university has done little or nothing to educate its stakeholders on sustainability.


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