Mining market value functions for targeted marketing

Targeted marketing typically involves the identification of customers or products having potential market values. We propose a linear model for solving this problem by drawing and extending results from information retrieval. It is assumed that each object is represented by values of a finite set of attributes. A market value function, which is a linear combination of utility functions on attribute values, is used to rank objects. Several methods are examined for mining market value functions. The main advantage of the model is that one can rank objects. of interest according to their market values, instead of classifying the objects. The theoretical results reported in this paper establish a basis on which further studies and experimental evaluation can be carried out.