Clustering customers

US8914372B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• International Business Machines Corporation · US

Inventors

• Heng Cao · Santa Clara, US
• Jin Dong · Beijing, CN
• Jacqueline Giang Huong Morris · Brooklyn, US
• Ming Xie · Beijing, CN
• Wen Jun Yin · Beijing, CN
• Bin Zhang · Beijing, CN

Key dates

• Filing date: Mar 28, 2012
• Grant date: Dec 16, 2014
• Expiry date: Mar 28, 2032

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06Q30/02
• WIPO field: IT methods for management
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A computer implemented method for clustering customers includes receiving a source set of customer records, wherein each customer record represents one customer, and each customer record includes at least one data attribute, and each data attribute has an attribute value; pre-processing the source set of customer records to generate a pre-processed set of customer records; executing a clustering algorithm on the pre-processed set of customer records to group the pre-processed set of customer records into clusters of a pre-defined number. The pre-processing comprises: determining the type of a customer in the source set of customer records; using a type attribute value to indicate the type of the customer in its customer record; normalizing data attribute values and type attribute values; weighting to the data attribute values and the type attribute values respectively to obtain weighted attribute values of the data attribute and weighted attribute values of the tune attribute.