Learning from Double Positive and Unlabeled Data for Potential-Customer Identification

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kato, Masahiro, Ikeda, Yuki, Baba, Kentaro, Imai, Takashi, Inokuchi, Ryo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915332904452096
author Kato, Masahiro
Ikeda, Yuki
Baba, Kentaro
Imai, Takashi
Inokuchi, Ryo
author_facet Kato, Masahiro
Ikeda, Yuki
Baba, Kentaro
Imai, Takashi
Inokuchi, Ryo
contents In this study, we propose a method for identifying potential customers in targeted marketing by applying learning from positive and unlabeled data (PU learning). We consider a scenario in which a company sells a product and can observe only the customers who purchased it. Decision-makers seek to market products effectively based on whether people have loyalty to the company. Individuals with loyalty are those who are likely to remain interested in the company even without additional advertising. Consequently, those loyal customers would likely purchase from the company if they are interested in the product. In contrast, people with lower loyalty may overlook the product or buy similar products from other companies unless they receive marketing attention. Therefore, by focusing marketing efforts on individuals who are interested in the product but do not have strong loyalty, we can achieve more efficient marketing. To achieve this goal, we consider how to learn, from limited data, a classifier that identifies potential customers who (i) have interest in the product and (ii) do not have loyalty to the company. Although our algorithm comprises a single-stage optimization, its objective function implicitly contains two losses derived from standard PU learning settings. For this reason, we refer to our approach as double PU learning. We verify the validity of the proposed algorithm through numerical experiments, confirming that it functions appropriately for the problem at hand.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_00436
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning from Double Positive and Unlabeled Data for Potential-Customer Identification
Kato, Masahiro
Ikeda, Yuki
Baba, Kentaro
Imai, Takashi
Inokuchi, Ryo
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Econometrics
Methodology
In this study, we propose a method for identifying potential customers in targeted marketing by applying learning from positive and unlabeled data (PU learning). We consider a scenario in which a company sells a product and can observe only the customers who purchased it. Decision-makers seek to market products effectively based on whether people have loyalty to the company. Individuals with loyalty are those who are likely to remain interested in the company even without additional advertising. Consequently, those loyal customers would likely purchase from the company if they are interested in the product. In contrast, people with lower loyalty may overlook the product or buy similar products from other companies unless they receive marketing attention. Therefore, by focusing marketing efforts on individuals who are interested in the product but do not have strong loyalty, we can achieve more efficient marketing. To achieve this goal, we consider how to learn, from limited data, a classifier that identifies potential customers who (i) have interest in the product and (ii) do not have loyalty to the company. Although our algorithm comprises a single-stage optimization, its objective function implicitly contains two losses derived from standard PU learning settings. For this reason, we refer to our approach as double PU learning. We verify the validity of the proposed algorithm through numerical experiments, confirming that it functions appropriately for the problem at hand.
title Learning from Double Positive and Unlabeled Data for Potential-Customer Identification
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Econometrics
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00436