Title: Interactive product catalogue with user preference tracking

Authors: Steven Sheng-Uei Guan, Yuan Sherng Tay

Addresses: School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, 119260, Singapore

Abstract: In the context of m-commerce, small screen size poses serious difficulty for users to browse effectively through a product catalogue, given the limited number of products that may be presented on-screen. Despite the availability of search engines, filters and recommender systems to aid users, these techniques focus on a narrow segment of product offering. The users are thus denied the opportunity to do a more expansive exploration of the products available. This paper describes a novel approach to overcome the constraints of small screen size. Through integration of a product catalogue with a recommender system, an adaptive system has been created that guides users through the process of product browsing. An original technique has been developed to cluster similar positive examples together to identify areas of interest of a user. The performance of this technique has been evaluated and the results proved to be promising.

Keywords: interactive catalogues; clustering; genetic algorithms; m-commerce; mobile commerce; product catalogues; user preferences; preference tracking; recommender systems; recommendations; product browsing; web services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWGS.2007.012637

International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 2007 Vol.3 No.1, pp.58 - 81

Published online: 01 Mar 2007 *

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