Identifying VIP Customers

American Express: Define VIP criteria from transaction behavior and identify the customers who qualify.

Assignment

You're an analyst on the customer loyalty team at American Express. The team is launching a premium rewards tier and wants to invite the card members who matter most to the business. Your manager has asked you to identify the VIP customers from recent transaction activity — but the team hasn't settled on what "VIP" means yet, so part of your job is to propose the criteria.

Deliverables

• A definition of VIP based on transaction behavior (for example, how often a customer transacts and how much they spend), with thresholds you choose and justify.
• The list of customers who qualify under your definition.
• A short explanation of any customers who look like VIPs at first glance but don't hold up, and why.
• A short closing report of your findings for the customer loyalty team, including anything they should double-check before relying on the numbers.

Data Description

amex_card_transactions.csv has one row per transaction record:

• transaction_id
• customer_id
• transaction_date
• amount
• merchant_category - e.g. Groceries, Fuel, Electronics
• record_type - the type of record in the processing system

Practicalities

You can solve this in Python, SQL, or a mix of both — StrataScratch notebooks support both languages in the same notebook.

Assume this data comes directly from the card processing system and hasn't been cleaned, so review it carefully before relying on the numbers. When something looks off, work out what it is and decide how to handle it; when a definition or a final decision is genuinely ambiguous, choose a reasonable option and explain why. There's often more than one valid way to compute a result, so explain the approach you take and the reasoning behind your choices.

What's assessed: your results, and how clearly you explain what you see in the data and justify the choices you make.