Marking of business district information of a merchant

A device for specifying commercial district information of merchants, which comprises:

• a first component for mining and calculating association rules of consumption and transaction data of consumers so as to obtain information of association between merchants;
• a second component for calculating rates of subordination of merchants whose commercial district information has not been specified to several commercial districts based on the association information and specified commercial district information of at least some of the merchants;
• and
• a third component for specifying the commercial district information for each of said merchants based on their rates of subordination.

An computer, which comprises a memory, a processor and a computer program stored and executable on the processor, wherein said processor carries out the following steps when executing the program:

• mining and calculating association rules of consumption and transaction data of consumers so as to obtain information of association between merchants;
• calculating rates of subordination of merchants whose commercial district information has not been specified to several commercial districts based on the association information and specified commercial district information of at least some of the merchants;
• and
• specifying the commercial district information for each of said merchants based on their rates of subordination.