Recommendations Using Information from Multiple Association Rules: A Probabilistic Approach

Author List: Ghoshal, Abhijeet; Menon, Syam; Sarkar, Sumit;
Information Systems Research, 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3, Page 532-551.
Business analytics has evolved from being a novelty used by a select few to an accepted facet of conducting business. Recommender systems form a critical component of the business analytics toolkit and, by enabling firms to effectively target customers with products and services, are helping alter the e-commerce landscape. A variety of methods exist for providing recommendations, with collaborative filtering, matrix factorization, and association-rule-based methods being the most common. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the quality of recommendations made using association rules. This is accomplished by combining rules when possible and stands apart from existing rule-combination methods in that it is strongly grounded in probability theory. Combining rules requires the identification of the best combination of rules from the many combinations that might exist, and we use a maximum-likelihood framework to compare alternative combinations. Because it is impractical to apply the maximum likelihood framework directly in real time, we show that this problem can equivalently be represented as a set partitioning problem by translating it into an information theoretic contextÑthe best solution corresponds to the set of rules that leads to the highest sum of mutual information associated with the rules. Through a variety of experiments that evaluate the quality of recommendations made using the proposed approach, we show that (i) a greedy heuristic used to solve the maximum likelihood estimation problem is very effective, providing results comparable to those from using the optimal set partitioning solution; (ii) the recommendations made by our approach are more accurate than those made by a variety of state-of-the-art benchmarks, including collaborative filtering and matrix factorization; and (iii) the recommendations can be made in a fraction of a second on a desktop computer, making it practical to use in real-world applications.
Keywords: personalization ; Bayesian estimation ; maximum likelihood ; information theory ; data analytics
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#97 0.302 set approach algorithm optimal used develop results use simulation experiments algorithms demonstrate proposed optimization present analytical distribution selection number existing
#189 0.142 recommendations recommender systems preferences recommendation rating ratings preference improve users frame contextual using frames sensemaking filtering manipulation specific collaborative items
#86 0.120 methods information systems approach using method requirements used use developed effective develop determining research determine assessment useful series critical existing
#132 0.084 likelihood multiple test survival promotion reputation increase actions run term likely legitimacy important rates findings long short higher argue prior
#31 0.083 problem problems solution solving problem-solving solutions reasoning heuristic theorizing rules solve general generating complex example formulation heuristics effective given finding
#137 0.078 phase study analysis business early large types phases support provided development practice effectively genres associated different sensemaking including form technologies
#20 0.054 procurement firms strategy marketing unified customers needs products strategies availability informedness proprietary purchase resonance policies open-source compatible competitors differentiation involve