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Moving recommender systems from on-line commerce to retail stores

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Abstract

The increasing diversity of consumers’ demand, as documented by the debate on the long tail of the distribution of sales volume across products, represents a challenge for retail stores. Recommender systems offer a tool to cope with this challenge. The recent developments in information technology and ubiquitous computing makes it feasible to move recommender systems from the on-line commerce, where they are widely used, to retail stores. In this paper, we aim to bridge the management literature and the computer science literature by analysing a number of issues that arise when applying recommender systems to retail stores: these range from the format of the stores that would benefit most from recommender systems to the impact of coverage and control of recommender systems on customer loyalty and competition among retail stores.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Elgar Fleisch, Florian Michahelles, and Dirk Martignoni for their fruitful suggestions on drafts of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Kreuzplatz 5, 8032, Zurich, Switzerland

    Frank E. Walter, Stefano Battiston, Mahir Yildirim & Frank Schweitzer

  2. Institut für Informatik, Universität Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Str. 10, 79106, Freiburg, Germany

    Mahir Yildirim

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  1. Frank E. Walter
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  2. Stefano Battiston
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  3. Mahir Yildirim
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  4. Frank Schweitzer
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Correspondence to Frank E. Walter.

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Walter, F.E., Battiston, S., Yildirim, M. et al. Moving recommender systems from on-line commerce to retail stores. Inf Syst E-Bus Manage 10, 367–393 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-011-0170-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-011-0170-8

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