Optimization Method For Cell Phone Suite Design Based On Consumer Choice Behavior Analysis

In 2008, the Chinese telecom industry formed a new competition pattern:the competition was focused on the three main telecom service provides, i.e., China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom. Now the competition between these telecom companies becomes fiercer, and the telecom market has changed to a buyer’s market. Mobile business service provided for cell phone customers is a central competitive issue to telecom service providers, which is also focused and studied in this dissertation. Cell phone suite is a kind of combination sales mode for telecom products and becomes kernel product for marketing of telecom companies. The design optimization of cell phone suite is an important fundamental task for operation of marketing of telecom companies. The management of cell phone suite is complex and professional; it has gone through an evolutionary process from chaos to normal, from product-oriented to customer-oriented, from homogenization to heterogenization. Although Currently telecom companies have a set of relatively stable management system and design process for cell phone suite, but the management mode of cell phone suite is still too rough, which is expressed in the two following aspects:first, a systematic customer lifecycle management architecture is not established. There are many complex, outdated, low-efficient and paradoxical cell phone suites in the market, resulting in inferior promote efficiency and high management cost. Secondly, there is not scientific and quantitative methodologies supporting cell phone suite design process, purchase behaviour of target customers, consume capability, customer lifetime value, market competition are not considered in the planning process, market survey and history data are not fully utilized. Efficient cell phone suite evaluation methods are not developed for accurate telecom marketing decision-making process.This dissertation focuses on the kernel work of management and design optimization of cell phone suite product. By combing with the author’s working experience in telecom company, the management and design process of cell phone suite product are intensively studied with the application of theories and methods of management science and engineering. The main contributions are listed as follows:(1)An architecture of cell phone suite lifecycle management is proposed for telecom companies. The kernel workflow and content of cell phone suite design optimization is analyzed. The whole lifetime management framework for cell phone suite, including market survey, suite planning, customer clustering, suite design, suite optimization and suite exiting, is established, which can help the management of cell phone suite more professional, systematic and flowmatic.(2) A framework model based on customer choice behaviour analysis is proposed from design process of cell phone suite. It can provide unified solution strategies for cell phone suite design including market survey, market segmentation, quantitative analysis of customer choice analysis, utility estimation of cell phone suite based on customer lifetime value, cell phone suite scheme evaluation, and optimal selection of cell phone suite schemes, help telecom companies design cell phone suite from the methodology level.(3)Characteristics of telecom customers are analyzed and a three dimensional model is proposed for telecom market segmentation. Kohonen clustering method is adopted to group the telecom customers according to historical data so that the customers with similar consume characteristics are clustered into one group. This method is advantages for telecom companies, since the companies can develop cell phone suite or marketing service strategies according to the consume characteristics of a specific cluster. Meanwhile, this method enables the great effect of the historical consumer’s data by utilizing data mining tools and artificial intelligence algorithms, help the telecom companies further carry out the utility evaluation and optimal selection of cell phone suites.(4)A quantitative evaluation method based on consumer purchase choice behaviour is proposed for cell phone suites. This method can estimate the market share and customer’s lifetime value of items of cell phone suites, help telecom companies quantitatively compare different cell phone suite schemes, and further conduct the decision-making based on the result of evaluations. Many factors such as competitive cell phone suites, the company’s existing suites, long-term effect of income, future profit and capital interest rate are considered in the modelling process, hence the established model better fits the practical situation of telecom market.(5)Characteristics of cell phone suites with uniform attribute levels are analyzed. Based on the proposed quantitative cell phone suite evaluation method, the optimization model for suites with uniform attribute levels is established. Genetic algorithms are developed to solve the established optimization model. The proposed method can help telecom companies apply advanced meta-heuristic algorithms to obtain the near-optimal cell phone suite schemes, avoid the current situation that suite design only relies on human experience and qualitative analysis, realize the systematic and scientific design of cell phone suite.(6)The problem that the number of items in a cell phone suite is changeable is considered in the modelling. The number of items in a cell phone suite is taken as a decision variable and the corresponding optimization model for cell phone suite design is established. By solving the established model, both the optimal values of attribute levels of each item of a cell phone suite and the optimal number of items of cell phone suite can be obtained, so that telecom companies can apply this quantitative method to select the optimal solution under the situation. The meta-heuristic algorithms, genetic algorithms and particle swarm optimization algorithm, are developed to solve the aforementioned optimization model. The computation effects of the two algorithms are compared and analyzed by the experiment study.This research tries to solve the problems of capacity increasing of cell phone suite management both from the macro-perspective and the micro-perspective. The management architecture of cell phone suite lifecycle is developed from the macroscopic view. The microcosmic view of this problem includes the follows:first, kernel framework model of cell phone suite is proposed; second, the quantitative evaluation and optimal scheme selection based on consumer choice behaviour analysis and customer lifetime value in cell phone suite design optimization. This research is meaningful for promoting the management level of cell phone suite and implementing systematic methods for cell phone suite design for telecom companies.