Bayesian Predictive Profiles With Applications to Retail Transaction Data

Massive transaction data sets are recorded in a routine manner in telecommunications, retail commerce, and Web site management. In this paper we address the problem of inferring predictive individual profiles from such historical transaction data. We describe a generative mixture model for count data and use an an approximate Bayesian estimation framework that effectively combines an individual's specific history with more general population patterns. We use a large real-world retail transaction data set to illustrate how these profiles consistently outperform non-mixture and non-Bayesian techniques in predicting customer behavior in out-of-sample data.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: NIPS
• Authors: Igor V. Cadez, Padhraic Smyth
• Keywords: Massive Transaction Data, NIPS 2001, NIPS 2007, Transaction Data, Transaction Data Set