An Analytical Multiple Criteria Framework for Temporal and Dynamic Business-to-Business Customer Segmentation in Manufacturing

2026-05-16

AI Summary

This study addresses the limitations of traditional B2B customer segmentation approaches, such as the RFM model, which rely on singular metrics and struggle to capture the complexity and dynamics of business interactions. To overcome this, the authors propose a dynamic, multi-criteria segmentation framework that extends RFM by incorporating stability and growth dimensions. The framework aligns with strategic business objectives through an adaptive Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and integrates multivariate time series clustering with a graph consensus model to enable temporal segmentation. Evaluated on data from over 3,000 manufacturing enterprises, the approach demonstrates strong temporal robustness and significantly enhances the precision of customer strategy formulation through preference-driven dynamic clustering.

Abstract

In sales and marketing, customer segmentation is an important tool for formulating strategies for customer treatment and supply chain management. Most segmentation implementations rely on limited criteria, such as recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) modeling, which often fail to capture complex business interactions. In this work, we design and evaluate a dynamic multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method in a business-to-business (B2B) manufacturing context by 1) extending RFM to dimensions of stability and growth, 2) integrating an adaptive and analytical hierarchical process to match business objectives, and 3) evaluating multivariate time-series clustering models. We then measure customer stability, tracking between-segment transitions, and volatility over time, and apply a graph-based consensus model to further strengthen the analysis. We test the efficacy of the proposed method using a real-world manufacturing company dataset to segment more than 3,000 B2B customers, showing strong robustness to temporal shifts. The implementation enables domain experts with preferential analytics to devise their strategies, providing effective decision support for B2B customer segmentation.

Problem

• customer segmentation
• B2B manufacturing
• dynamic segmentation
• temporal analysis
• multi-criteria decision-making

Innovation

• dynamic customer segmentation
• multi-criteria decision-making
• time-series clustering
• analytical hierarchy process
• B2B manufacturing