cohort analysis

Definition

A method of grouping customers by shared characteristics or behaviors within a specific timeframe to track patterns over time. It's essentially marketing's way of figuring out which batch of customers is actually worth keeping around.

Example Usage

Our cohort analysis revealed that users who signed up in December had terrible retention rates, probably because they were just burning holiday gift cards.

Origin

Borrowed from epidemiology and social sciences in the 1990s

Fun Fact

The term 'cohort' originally referred to a unit of Roman soldiers, typically 480 men, which is coincidentally about how many analysts it takes to agree on cohort definitions.

Source: Data analytics and marketing research methodology

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