Spark for churn prediction

In this section, we will start with a real-life business case description, and then review the steps for preparing the Apache Spark computing for our churn prediction project.

The use case

The YST Corporation is a big auto corporation selling and leasing vehicles to millions of customers. The company wishes to improve customer retention by using machine learning with big data, as they understand that consumers today go through a complex decision making process before purchasing or leasing a car, that it is becoming increasingly important to proactively identify customers that have a tendency to leave, and take preventive interventions to retain such customers.

The company has collected a lot of customer satisfaction data through their dealers and service centers as well as through their frequently conducted customer surveys. At the same time, the company has collected data for customers' online behavior from their web sites along with some social media data. Of course...