???
Hi there, i came across the expression chum rate.
O.K. i found churn rate, i found chum and i found rate.
But none of the online dictionarys gave me an translation into german. Can you help me

Never heard of it. What’s the context?

Are you sure it’s not CHURN RATE you’re looking for? That’s a common expression in the telecom industry meaning the rate at which subscribers change service providers.

The only kind of CHUM RATE I can think of would be some kind of BUDDY DISCOUNT, i.e. a special price for a friend. But it sounds a bit fishy.

- PW

If indeed you mean "churn rate", that would be Abwanderungsquote in German, as far as I can tell. Enter both "churn rate" and "Abwanderungsquote" in Google and you get several hits that provide this translation.

Ilka

Are you sure it’s not CHURN RATE you’re looking for?

yeah: i found the expression in http://www.tipponline.com/articles/97_99/e&p/Me101098.htm and a collegue iof mine had it also in some  paper.

The a.m. article says: ...chum rate (chum is the percentage of subscribers who discontinue and then resubscribe in the course of a year).

I thought also of churn rate, but with the definition given in the article it’s not the same.

These are customers that come back…..

Harry

[quote author=Ilka link=board=idiom;num=1051175567;start=0#2 date=04/24/03 at 14:04:43]If indeed you mean "churn rate", that would be Abwanderungsquote in German, as far as I can tell. Enter both "churn rate" and "Abwanderungsquote" in Google and you get several hits that provide this translation.

Ilka

Yes, thats o.k. i’ve done this, my problem is the expression chum rate…

Harry

Harry, judging by your definition (chum is the percentage of subscribers who discontinue and then resubscribe in the course of a year), this is churn rate. An "rn" is frequently read as an "m" when a text is OCR’d (scanned) so that may be the source of this particular spelling error. The only problem is that by your definition, Abwanderungsquote may not be the best translation since the subscribers are resubscribing and not leaving for good.

Ilka

I agree with Ilka about the misreading of "rn" for "m."  I’ve never heard the term before, but if it really is chum rate, it could be the rate at which chum is ladled overboard when chumming for bluefish.  Or, as one could say to someone who has incurred one’s displeasure:  "Would you like to go fishing, old chum?"  

If it is indeed ‘chum rate’, then it’s a specialized usage within the industry, rather than a term in common use. I don’t think most native English speakers would understand it without explanation.

~Silver

In many industries that I am familiar with, CHURN is used as a turnover rate, either of customers, or employees.

Many large organizations track the stability of their employee base as a churn rate.

In some businesses with very volatile sales prices and lot’s of competition (think groceries for example), many customers will go where today’s best prices are. Many more will tend to do all their shopping in one place, thinking (hoping?) the savings will average out. The roving customer’s are another form of churn.

In the newspaper business, the number of cities with more than one daily paper is small and shrinking. Not a lot of customers move from one paper to another. There are many reasons why some subscribers may stop and start: disaffected with content or lack thereof, disagreement with editorial slant, frustration with delivery service, or to get a better subscription rate (papers often give a better rate to starts than to renewals.) All of this could be described as churn.

Demijohn

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

[hr]churn - O.E. cyrin, from P.Gmc. *kernjon, probably akin to cyrnel "kernel," from the grainy appearance of churned cream. Extended verbal senses are from late 17c.
[hr]

I just thought the etymology of churn was interesting.

-Tim