An approach based on data mining and genetic algorithm to optimizing time series clustering for efficient segmentation of customer behavior

Abstract

In today's highly competitive market, organizations face significant challenges in accurately understanding and segmenting customer behavior due to the inherently dynamic and evolving nature of customer interactions over time. Traditional customer segmentation methods often neglect these temporal variations, leading to ineffective business strategies and missed opportunities. This research addresses this critical gap by introducing an innovative time series-based approach for customer behavior segmentation. By modeling each customer's behavior as a time series capturing key metrics such as purchase frequency, transaction amounts, and customer lifecycle costs the proposed method dynamically adapts to behavioral changes over time. To enhance segmentation precision, a genetic algorithm is employed to optimize feature weights, ensuring that the most relevant factors are emphasized. These optimized features are then clustered using spectral clustering to identify distinct and meaningful customer segments. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated using 30 months of transactional data from a payment services company. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach, particularly when combined with spectral clustering and optimally weighted features, significantly surpassing the performance of traditional static segmentation techniques. This research not only provides a more accurate framework for uncovering hidden patterns in customer behavior but also delivers actionable insights for targeted marketing and personalized customer strategies.