The performance of recommender systems in online shopping: A user-centric study

• Published in: Expert systems with applications Vol. 40; no. 14; pp. 5551 - 5562
• Main Authors: Dabrowski, Maciej, Acton, Thomas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Ltd 15.10.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Aids; Applied sciences; Catalogues; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Crashworthiness; Decision making; Decision theory; Decision theory. Utility theory; E-commerce; Exact sciences and technology; Expert systems; On-line systems; Online; Operational research and scientific management; Operational research. Management science; Preference relaxation; Recommender systems; Searching; Software; SBRREP; SBR; Preference relaxation; NR; SBRADD; Decision theory; E-commerce; Recommender systems; SR; Performance evaluation; Motor car; Filtering; Decision support system; Decision making; Context aware; Recommendation; Filter; Preference; User study; Relaxation method; Camera; Electronic trade; Web site; Advertising; User behavior
• ISSN: 0957-4174; 1873-6793
• DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2013.04.022

•We evaluate four approaches to online product search in an extensive user study with real data.•The approaches that we study exploit novel preference relaxation methods to recommend products.•We compare the results of a user experiment with simulations, using two large sets of products.•We show that a particular preference relaxation method improves the decisions of online shoppers. This research investigates the effects of preference relaxation on decision-making performance of users in online preference-based product search contexts. We compare four recommender systems based on different preference relaxation methods in extensive user experiments with 111 subjects that use two real-world datasets: 1818 digital cameras and 45,278 used car advertisements gathered from popular e-commerce websites. Our results provide new insights into the positive impact of the Soft-Boundary Preference Relaxation methods on decision-making quality and effort. The paper extends previous studies on this topic and demonstrates that decision aids based on preference relaxation techniques can effectively enhance preference-based product search in online product catalogues and help alleviate common disadvantages of form-based filtering mechanisms.