The Differences between Recommender Technologies in their Impact on Sales Diversity

Matt, Christian ; Hess, Thomas und Weiß, Christian (2013): The Differences between Recommender Technologies in their Impact on Sales Diversity. 34st International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2013, Milano, Italy, December 15-18, 2013. In: ECIS 2013 Proceedings,

Abstract

Recommender systems are frequently used as part of online shops to help consumers browse through large product offerings by recommending those products which are the most relevant for them. Although consumers’ interactions with recommender systems have been subject to substantial research, it is still unclear what the effect on aggregated sales diversity is, i.e. whether this leads to predominance of fast-selling or niche products. It is also unclear, whether any potential effects would differ between specific recommender technologies. We created a realistic web-experiment to monitor consumer behavior while purchasing digital music tracks when different recommender technologies are present. To analyze potential changes in sales diversity we used the Gini coefficient as well as additional measures. We found that sales diversity increases for all recommender technologies, except for bestseller lists. Furthermore, the differences across recommender technologies are rather small. Our findings have significant implications for online retailers and for producers.

• Dokumententyp: Konferenzbeitrag (Paper)
• Fakultät: Betriebswirtschaft > Institut für Digitales Management und Neue Medien
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft
• Sprache: Englisch