Generalized additive models (GAMs) are a generalization of generalized linear models (GLMs) and constitute a powerful technique which has successfully proven its ability to capture nonlinear relationships between explanatory variables and a response variable in many domains. In this paper, GAMs...

In an era of strong customer relationship management (CRM) emphasis, firms strive to build valuable relationships with their existing customer base. In this study we attempt to better understand three important measures of customer outcome: next buy, partial defection and customers’...

Although most data mining (DM) models are complex and general in nature, the implementation of such models in specific environments us often subject to practical constraints (e.g. budget constraints) or thresholds (e.g. only mail to customers with an expected profit higher than the investment...

Firms increasingly view each contact with their customers as an opportunity that needs to be managed. The primary purpose of this article is to gain a better understanding of the customers’ post-complaint period. Specific focus is placed on the impact of effective complaint handling on actual...

We studied the problem of optimizing the performance of a DSS for churn prediction. In particular, we investigated the beneficial effect of adding the voice of customers through call center emails – i.e. textual information - to a churn prediction system that only uses traditional marketing...

CRM gains increasing importance due to intensive competition and saturated markets. With the purpose of retaining customers, academics as well as practitioners find it crucial to build a churn prediction model that is as accurate as possible. This study applies support vector machines in a...

The enhancement of existing relationships is of pivotal importance to companies, since attracting new customers is known to be more expensive. Therefore, as part of their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy, many researchers have been analyzing “why” customers decide to switch....

The management of coupon promotions is an important issue for marketing managers since it still is the major promotion medium. However, the distribution of coupons does not go without problems. Although manufacturers and retailers are investing heavily in the attempt to convince as many...

Nursing staff is principally cyclically scheduled in various hospitals in Belgium. The employed cyclic schedules embody, however, only a weak reflection of the ultimate nurse rosters constructed for a specific month. In this paper we investigate the benefits of integrating nurse-specific...