Which analytic technique is used to determine customer purchasing patterns?

The selection of data mining as the analytic technique to determine customer purchasing patterns is appropriate because data mining involves extracting hidden patterns from large sets of data. This process enables businesses to analyze various aspects of customer behavior, including purchasing trends and preferences.

Data mining employs various methods, such as clustering, classification, and association rule learning, to unveil insights from transactional data. For instance, through association rules, a business can uncover relationships, such as customers who purchase certain products often also buy related items, which can be vital in influencing marketing strategies and inventory management.

Other techniques listed may serve different analytics purposes. For example, market segmentation focuses on dividing a customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics to tailor marketing efforts, while customer churn analysis examines the factors that lead customers to stop doing business with a company, mainly targeting retention strategies. Regression analysis helps quantify relationships between variables but is not specifically aimed at discovering purchasing patterns directly. In contrast, data mining encompasses a broad range of methods and directly addresses the goal of identifying and understanding customer purchasing behaviors.