A Weighted Voting Ensemble Machine Learning Framework for Customer Lifetime Value Prediction in E-commerce

Seun Ebiesuwa *

Department of Computer Science, Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria.

Daniel Amorue

Department of Computer Science, Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria.

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.


Abstract

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) prediction supports the allocation of marketing resources and the identification of high-value customers in e-commerce. Traditional approaches may not adequately represent non-linear and multidimensional purchasing behaviour, particularly when customer-value classes are imbalanced. This study developed a weighted soft-voting ensemble for CLTV tier classification using the Dunnhumby Complete Journey dataset. Transactional, product, and household-demographic data were integrated, and customer-level recency, frequency, monetary, behavioural, promotional, temporal, and demographic features were engineered from the training period. A chronological split was applied at day 533 so that the training data preceded the evaluation period, thereby reducing the risk of temporal leakage. The Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique was applied only to the training data. The ensemble combined Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost after isotonic probability calibration. Dynamic voting weights were derived from F1-score, receiver operating characteristic area under the curve, and accuracy. The proposed ensemble achieved 77.80% accuracy, 77.25% macro F1-score, 77.70% precision, 77.33% recall, and 90.58% ROC-AUC. It exceeded the individual models in accuracy, macro F1-score, precision, and recall, although CatBoost produced a slightly higher ROC-AUC. The findings indicate that calibrated, performance-weighted probability aggregation can provide a modest improvement in balanced CLTV tier classification. Further validation across additional retail datasets and market settings is required before broader generalisation. 

Keywords: E-Commerce, ensemble methods, customer lifetime value, machine learning, stack ensemble.


How to Cite

Ebiesuwa, Seun, and Daniel Amorue. 2026. “A Weighted Voting Ensemble Machine Learning Framework for Customer Lifetime Value Prediction in E-Commerce”. Asian Journal of Research in Computer Science 19 (8):113-23. https://doi.org/10.9734/ajrcos/2026/v19i8895.

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