An Effective Approach to Promote Air Traveler Repurchasing Using the Random Forest Algorithm: Predictive Model Design and Utility Evaluation

Abstract

How to promote air traveler repurchasing has become an important marketing strategy in airlines. However, because of the growing concern over user privacy, effectively and accurately delivering advertising to promote repurchasing has become more difficult. Here, we propose an effective framework based on machine learning to model the air traveler repurchasing and furthermore employ a field experiment to test the utility of a model framework. Specifically, we collected that this model framework is based on the random forest algorithm and compared with the conclusions of the other four algorithms, K-nearest neighbor, decision tree, support vector machine, and ExtraTree algorithms. The results show that the proposed model framework is better than the prediction results of the other algorithms. In addition, the proposed model framework was verified through a real case of an airline in China. This study will serve as a guide to analyze the repurchase behaviors of an air traveler and help airlines build a loyal air traveler base.