Title
Profit-based feature selection using support vector machines – General framework and an application for customer retention
Abstract
Graphical abstractDisplay Omitted HighlightsA novel profit-based feature selection method for churn prediction with SVM is presented.A backward elimination algorithm is performed to maximize the profit of a retention campaign.Our experiments on churn prediction datasets underline the potential of the proposed approaches. Churn prediction is an important application of classification models that identify those customers most likely to attrite based on their respective characteristics described by e.g. socio-demographic and behavioral variables. Since nowadays more and more of such features are captured and stored in the respective computational systems, an appropriate handling of the resulting information overload becomes a highly relevant issue when it comes to build customer retention systems based on churn prediction models. As a consequence, feature selection is an important step of the classifier construction process. Most feature selection techniques; however, are based on statistically inspired validation criteria, which not necessarily lead to models that optimize goals specified by the respective organization. In this paper we propose a profit-driven approach for classifier construction and simultaneous variable selection based on support vector machines. Experimental results show that our models outperform conventional techniques for feature selection achieving superior performance with respect to business-related goals.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1016/j.asoc.2015.05.058
Applied Soft Computing
Keywords
Field
DocType
Data mining,Feature selection,Support vector machines,Churn prediction,Customer retention,Maximum profit
Customer retention,Data mining,Information overload,Feature selection,Support vector machine,Artificial intelligence,Predictive modelling,Classifier (linguistics),Machine learning,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
35
C
1568-4946
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
14
0.64
28
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sebastián Maldonado150832.45
Álvaro Flores2140.64
Thomas Verbraken31084.69
Bart Baesens42511145.52
R. Weber5857.55