A Data Mining methodology for cross-sales

In this paper we discuss the use of Data Mining to provide a solution to the problem of cross-sales. We define and analyse the cross-sales problem and develop a hybrid methodology to solve it, using characteristic rule discovery and deviation detection. Deviation detection is used as a measure of interest to filter out the less interesting characteristic rules and only retain the best characteristic rules discovered. The effect of domain knowledge on the interestingness value of the discovered rules is discussed and techniques for refining the knowledge to increase this interestingness measure are studied. We also investigate the use of externally procured lifestyle and other survey data for data enrichment and discuss its use as additional domain knowledge. The developed methodology has been applied to a real world cross-sales problem within the financial sector, and the results are also presented in this paper. Although the application described is in the financial sector, the methodology is generic in nature and can be applied to other sectors. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.