Estimation Of The Customer Mean Survival Time
In Subscription-based Businesses
Author(s)
Z. Mohammed, S. Maritz & D. Kotze
Abstract
Two main components must be estimated in order to estimate customer lifetime
value. The first component is customer survival time (time from subscription to
cancellation of the service) and the second is the customer monthly margin.
While the customer monthly margin could be estimated directly from the
accounting model, the challenge will be the estimation of time to cancellation. In
this study 30000 customers were selected from a well established
subscription-based company. The customers were classified (segmented)
according to their demographic and usage related characteristics. The stratified
Cox model was used to identify the significant variables and to calculate hazard
ratios. Both nonparametric and parametric survival analysis techniques were
used to estimate the mean survival time. The results showed that gender, age and
direct marketing city are significant in predicting the hazard of cancellation of
the service. Young customers (age less than 26 years) have significantly shorter
mean survival time than other age groups. A large difference between the
restricted and unrestricted mean survival time was found; this may be due to the
extreme right censoring of 85% that exists.
Key words: subscription-based businesses, customer lifetime value, Kaplan-Meier
product limit, Cox proportional hazard model, parametric survival
regression.
1 Introduction
Customer survival time is defined as time from subscription to cancellation of
the service. The study of customer survival time has two important roles to play.
The first in identifying important covariates that affect customer relationship
Keywords
subscription-based businesses, customer lifetime value, Kaplan-Meier
product limit, Cox proportional hazard model, parametric survival
regression.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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