Abstract
The Technology and Service Providers (TSPs) play a critical role for innovative technology provision. Effective suggestions for potential customer identification are required for the TSPs. In order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of business promotion, this research proposes a data-mining model to explore the characteristics of critical customers for the TSPs. This paper utilises the project history to classify customers into critical and noncritical customer categories. Features of the critical customer category are extracted to serve as the basis for potential customer identification. The explicit customer characteristics discovered via the proposed model can provide the TSPs with systematic suggestions for business promotion. Copyright © 2006 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.