Research Trends in Customer Churn Prediction: A Data Mining Approach

Abstract

This study aims to present a very recent literature review on customer churn prediction based on 40 relevant articles published between 2010 and June 2020. For searching the literature, the 40 most relevant articles according to Google Scholar ranking were selected and collected. Then, each of the articles were scrutinized according to six main dimensions: Reference; Areas of Research; Main Goal; Dataset; Techniques; outcomes. The research has proven that the most widely used data mining techniques are decision tree (DT), support vector machines (SVM) and Logistic Regression (LR). The process combined with the massive data accumulation in the telecom industry and the increasingly mature data mining technology motivates the development and application of customer churn model to predict the customer behavior. Therefore, the telecom company can effectively predict the churn of customers, and then avoid customer churn by taking measures such as reducing monthly fixed fees.