Search and Preference-Based Navigation in Electronic Shopping

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address the requirements for electronic shopping systems. Large-scale computerized electronic shopping systems need to accommodate both (a) a large number of products, many of which are close substitutes, and (b) a heterogeneous body of customers who have complex, multidimensional – and perhaps rapidly changing – preferences regarding the products for sale in the system. Further, these systems will have to be designed in a manner so as to both (c) reduce the complexity of the shopping problem from the customer’s point of view, and (d) effectively and insightfully match products to customers’ needs. We show has an abstraction hierarchy with an imposed distance metric provides the necessary elements to implement the desired features. Further, we indicate how the distance metric, in the context of the abstraction hierarchy, can be interpreted as a unidimensional utility function. Finally, we extend the single dimensional (single perspective) treatment to multiple dimensions, or perspectives, and show how the resulting representation can be interpreted as a multiattribute utility function. We argue that the resulting function is plausible and, most importantly, testable.