The Role of Peer Influence in Churn in Wireless Networks

Subscriber churn remains a top challenge for wireless carriers. These carriers need to understand the determinants of churn to confidently apply effective retention strategies to ensure their profitability and growth. In this paper, we look at the effect of peer influence on churn and we try to disentangle it from other effects that drive simultaneous churn across friends but that do not relate to peer influence. We analyze a random sample of roughly 10 thousand subscribers from large dataset from a major wireless carrier over a period of 10 months. We apply survival models and generalized propensity score to identify the role of peer influence. We show that the propensity to churn increases when friends do and that it increases more when many strong friends churn. Therefore, our results suggest that churn managers should consider strategies aimed at preventing group churn. We also show that survival models fail to disentangle homophily from peer influence over-estimating the effect of peer influence.Comment: Accepted in Seventh ASE International Conference on Social Computing (Socialcom 2014), Best Paper Award Winne

Review of Data Mining Techniques for Churn Prediction in Telecom

Telecommunication sector generates a huge amount of data due to increasing number of subscribers, rapidly renewable technologies; data based applications and other value added service. This data can be usefully mined for churn analysis and prediction. Significant research had been undertaken by researchers worldwide to understand the data mining practices that can be used for predicting customer churn. This paper provides a review of around 100 recent journal articles starting from year 2000 to present the various data mining techniques used in multiple customer based churn models. It then summarizes the existing telecom literature by highlighting the sample size used, churn variables employed and the findings of different DM techniques. Finally, we list the most popular techniques for churn prediction in telecom as decision trees, regression analysis and clustering, thereby providing a roadmap to new researchers to build upon novel churn management models

Review of Data Mining Techniques for Churn Prediction in Telecom

Telecommunication sector generates a huge amount of data due to increasing number of subscribers, rapidly renewable technologies; data based applications and other value added service. This data can be usefully mined for churn analysis and prediction. Significant research had been undertaken by researchers worldwide to understand the data mining practices that can be used for predicting customer churn. This paper provides a review of around 100 recent journal articles starting from year 2000 to present the various data mining techniques used in multiple customer based churn models. It then summarizes the existing telecom literature by highlighting the sample size used, churn variables employed and the findings of different DM techniques. Finally, we list the most popular techniques for churn prediction in telecom as decision trees, regression analysis and clustering, thereby providing a roadmap to new researchers to build upon novel churn management models

The effect of friends’ churn on consumer behavior in mobile networks

We study how consumers decide which tariff plan to choose and whether to churn when their friends churn in the mobile industry. We develop a theoretical model showing conditions under which users remain with their carrier and conditions under which they churn when their friends do. We then use a large and rich anonymized longitudinal panel of call detailed records to characterize the consumers’ path to death with unprecedented level of detail. We explore the structure of the network inferred from these data to derive instruments for friends’ churn, which is typically endogenous in network settings. This allows us to econometrically identify the effect of peer influence in our setting. On average, we find that each additional friend that churns increases the monthly churn rate by 0.06 percent. The observed monthly churn rate across our dataset is 2.15 percent. We also find that firms introducing the pre-paid tariff plans that charge the same price to call users inside and outside the carrier help retain consumers that would otherwise churn. In our setting, without this tariff plan the monthly churn rate could have been as high as 8.09 percent. We perform a number of robustness checks, in particular to how we define friends in the social graph, and show that our results remain unchanged. Our paper shows that the traditional definition of customer lifetime value underestimates the value of consumers and, in particular, that of consumers with more friends due to the effect of contagious churn and, therefore, managers should actively take into account the structure of the social network when prioritizing whom to target during retention campaigns.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Utjecaj društvene mreže na odljev korisnika u mobilnim mrežama

As the telecommunications sector has reached its mature stage, maintaining existing users has become crucial for service providers. Analyzing the call data records, it is possible to observe their users in the context of social network and obtain additional insights about the spread of influence among interconnected users, which is relevant to churn. In this paper, we examine the communication patterns of mobile phone users and subscription plan logs. Our goal is to use a simple model to predict which users are most likely to churn, solely by observing each user\u27s social network, which is formed by outgoing calls, and churn among their neighbors. To measure the importance of social network parameters with regard to churn prediction, we compare three models: spatial classification, regression model, and artificial neural networks. For each subscriber, we observe three social network parameters, the number of neighbors that have churned, the number of calls to these neighbors, and the duration of these calls for different time periods. The results indicate that using only one or two of these parameters yields results that are comparable or better than the complex models with large amounts of individual and/or social network input parameters that other researchers have proposed.Kako je telekomunikacijski sektor dosegao zreli stadij, zadržavanje postojećih korisnika od ključne je važnosti za pružatelje telekomunikacijskih usluga. Analizom liste poziva moguće je nadzirati korisnike u kontekstu društvene mreže i dobiti dodatni uvid u širenje utjecaja među povezanim korisnicima, što je relevantno za odljev korisnika. U ovom radu razmatramo obrasce komunikacije korisnika mobilnih mreža i podatke o planu pretplate. Naš cilj je korištenjem jednostavnog modela predvidjeti koji korisnici su najskloniji prijelazu na drugu mrežu, pritom koristeći samo korisnikovu društvenu mrežu koja se formira odlaznim pozivima i prijelazima između mreža njihovih susjeda. S ciljem mjerenja važnosti pojedinog parametra društvene mreže za predikciju prelaska na drugu mrežu uspoređena su tri modela: prostorna klasifikacija, regresijski model i model neuronske mreže. Za svakog pretplatnika razmatramo tri parametra društvene mreže: broj susjeda koji su promijenili mrežu, broj poziva prema njima kao i trajanje spomenutih poziva u različitim vremenskim razdobljima. Rezultati pokazuju kako se korištenjem samo jednog ili dva od navedenih parametara društvene mreže postižu rezultati koji su usporedivi ili bolji od rezultata složenijih modela drugih autora koji koriste veliki broj osobnih parametara i/ili parametara društvene mreže

Anonymous Social Networks versus Peer Networks in Restaurant Choice

abstract: I compare the effect of anonymous social network ratings (Yelp.com) and peer group recommendations on restaurant demand. I conduct a two-stage choice experiment in which restaurant visits in the first stage are informed by online social network reviews from Yelp.com, and visits in the second stage by peer network reviews. I find that anonymous reviewers have a stronger effect on restaurant preference than peers. I also compare the power of negative reviews with that of positive reviews. I found that negative reviews are more powerful compared to the positive reviews on restaurant preference. More generally, I find that in an environment of high attribute uncertainty, information gained from anonymous experts through social media is likely to be more influential than information obtained from peers.Dissertation/ThesisM.S. Agribusiness 201

Systematic Literature Review on Customer Switching Behaviour from Marketing and Data Science Perspectives

This paper systematically examines the literature review in the field of customer switching behavior. Based on the literature review, it can be concluded that customer switching behavior is a topic that has been widely researched, with a focus on various industries, particularly banking and telecommunications. Research trends in this area have shown a positive direction in recent years, and the amount of research being done in marketing and data science is relatively balanced. In marketing, correlational studies are predominant, with a focus on identifying relationships between customer satisfaction, price-related variables, attractiveness of alternatives, service failure, quality, and switching costs to switching behavior. The PPM model is also gaining popularity as an important development for switching behavior because it considers both push and pull factors. Data science research has shown promising results in predicting customer switching behavior, with each research paper achieving good predictive accuracy. However, research gaps spanning the fields of marketing and data science need to be addressed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of customer switching behavior. Overall, the literature review shows that customer switching behavior is an important concern for businesses, and further research in this area is essential to gain a better understanding of customer behavior and develop effective strategies to retain customers

The Role of Employee Relationship Management in Developing Staff Word-Of-Mouth amongst seconded Academic Staff at Saudi Universities

Many organizations have recognized the significance of having good relationship with their employees, because they believe that service quality is greatly affected by frontline service employees. Therefore, this study aims to identify the role of employee relationship management (ERM) in developing staff word-of-mouth (SWOM) amongst seconded academic staff at Saudi universities through mediating employee dissent (ED). A survey questionnaire was prepared and distributed with a sample of 327-seconded academic staff in 10 Saudi universities. The results point to partial support was found for the mediating effect of ED between ERM and SWOM. Therefore, ERM increasingly contributed in developing SWOM in the existence of articulated dissent. Meanwhile, this contribution decreases in the existence of both latent and displaced dissent. Even more surprisingly, the results showed that although ED is a relatively new concept, but it plays negatively and pivotally partial mediating role in the relationship between ERM and SWOM. These results suggested that managers within Saudi universities urgently need strategies to create an ambiance in which academic staff can feel a sense of voice to diminish negative ED and promote positive SWOM as an effective recruitment strategy. In the light of results, the study discussed number of theoretical and managerial implications. Keywords: Employee Relationship Management, Staff word-of-Mouth, Employee Dissent, Seconded    Academic Staff, Recruitment Strategy

Anonymous Social Networks versus Peer Networks in Restaurant Choice

ABSTRACT I compare the effect of anonymous social network ratings (Yelp.com) and peer group recommendations on restaurant demand. I conduct a two-stage choice experiment in which restaurant visits in the first stage are informed by online social network reviews from Yelp.com, and visits in the second stage by peer network reviews. I find that anonymous reviewers have a stronger effect on restaurant preference than peers. I also compare the power of negative reviews with that of positive reviews. I found that negative reviews are more powerful compared to the positive reviews on restaurant preference. More generally, I find that in an environment of high attribute uncertainty, information gained from anonymous experts through social media is likely to be more influential than information obtained from peers