Scoring recommendations and explanations with a probabilistic user model
First Claim
1. A recommendation selection system comprising a non-transitory, computer readable medium that includes code that is executable by a processor to implement:
- a rule evaluator for producing a set of candidate recommendations; and
a recommendation selector that uses a probabilistic purchase decision model to rank each of the candidate recommendations using one or more purchase decision gating factors to calculate, for each candidate recommendation, a boost in expected margin resulting from the candidate recommendation being issued, as compared to the candidate recommendation not being issued.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A data processing system generates recommendations for on-line shopping by scoring recommendations matching the customer'"'"'s cart contents using by assessing and ranking each candidate recommendation by the expected incremental margin associated with the recommendation being issued (as compared to the expected margin associated with the recommendation not being issued) by taking into consideration historical associations, knowledge of the layout of the site, the complexity of the product being sold, the user'"'"'s session behavior, the quality of the selling point messages, product life cycle, substitutability, demographics and/or other considerations relating to the customer purchase environment. In an illustrative implementation, scoring inputs for each candidate recommendation (such as relevance, exposure, clarity and/or pitch strength) are included in a probabilistic framework (such as a Bayesian network) to score the effectiveness of the candidate recommendation and/or associated selling point messages by comparing a recommendation outcome (e.g., purchase likelihood or expected margin resulting from a given recommendation) against a non-recommendation outcome (e.g., the purchase likelihood or expected margin if no recommendation is issued). In addition, a probabilistic framework may also be used to select a selling point message for inclusion with a selected candidate recommendation by assessing the relative strength of the selling point messages by factoring in a user profile match factor (e.g., the relative likelihood that the customer matches the various user case profiles).
23 Citations
17 Claims
-
1. A recommendation selection system comprising a non-transitory, computer readable medium that includes code that is executable by a processor to implement:
-
a rule evaluator for producing a set of candidate recommendations; and a recommendation selector that uses a probabilistic purchase decision model to rank each of the candidate recommendations using one or more purchase decision gating factors to calculate, for each candidate recommendation, a boost in expected margin resulting from the candidate recommendation being issued, as compared to the candidate recommendation not being issued. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
-
-
9. An article of manufacture comprising at least one recordable medium having stored thereon executable instructions and data which, when executed by at least one processing device, cause the at least one processing device to:
-
use a recommendation context associated with a customer to identify a set of candidate recommendations that match a recommendation context associated with a customer; calculate a score value for each candidate recommendation using a probabilistic model to determine a boost in expected margin value for each candidate recommendation using one or more predetermined scoring criteria; rank the set of candidate recommendations using the score value for each candidate recommendations; and issue at least the candidate recommendation rule having the highest score value as a purchase recommendation to the customer. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11)
-
-
12. A computer-based method for providing purchase recommendations on a web site to one or more customers, comprising:
-
collecting recommendation context information for a customer; using the recommendation context to identify a set of candidate recommendations; using a probabilistic model of a customer purchase decision to score the set of candidate recommendations by calculating a boost in a purchase-related criteria for each candidate recommendation using a plurality of gating factors in the customer purchase decision; and selecting the candidate recommendation having the highest score for issuance to the customer. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
-
Specification