Identifying high-value airlines customers for strategies of online marketing systems: An empirical case in Taiwan

Purpose The purpose of this study is to discover valuable customers for enterprises. The international market of Taiwan airlines can be enhanced; thus, this study aims at Taiwan's airline market as a research area. Design/methodology/approach This research uses data mining technologies with a proposed model to analyse airline customer values for big data online marketing systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) system. The research applied supervised apriori algorithm, socio-economic variables and a proposed model to discover the rules/markets. Findings The results show that eight markets were discovered and three association rules were established for business systems of airlines. Originality/value The valuable travellers/markets can be discovered by this research. By collecting shoppers' transactional data, global online CRM and point of sales (POS) systems can be big data marketing systems. The research framework can be easily applied in online CRM/POS or big data marketing systems for international airlines; however, it is for other global businesses as well.