A retail bank wanted to understand the products and services that it should try to cross-sell to its customers. The number of new customers joining the bank had reduced due to a general economic slowdown, primarily caused by fewer customers switching providers. Management decided that effective cross-selling was the key to increasing revenues. In the past, there had been continuous attempts at cross-selling. Most of these attempts were supported by some form of analysis, but the success rate of the customer campaigns to cross-sell had been lower than expected. Management wanted to take a comprehensive approach, and rely on multiple strategies and methodologies, if necessary, to drive cross-selling. To understand customer purchase behavior, MBA was proposed as one of the analysis methodologies.

By conducting the analysis, management wanted to explore the affinity between products. Once identified, the aim would be to cross-sell products with a high affinity to the existing purchase baskets of customers. Another option could be to incentivize the customer to purchase products with lower affinity. The incentives could range from preferential rates, cash-backs, freebies, and so on. Currently, the bank sold the following products and services: