Recommender systems using cluster-indexing collaborative filtering and social data analytics

Abstract

As a result of the extensive variety of products available in e-commerce settings during the last decade, recommender systems have been highlighted as a means of mitigating the problem of information overload. Collaborative filtering (CF) is the most widely used algorithm to build such systems, and improving the predictive accuracy of CF-based recommender systems has been a major research challenge. This research aims to improve the prediction accuracy of CF by incorporating social network analysis (SNA) and clustering techniques. Our proposed model identifies the most influential people in an online social network by SNA and then conducts clustering analysis using these people as initial centroids (cluster centres). Finally, the model makes recommendations using cluster-indexing CF based on the clustering outcomes. In this step, our model adjusts the effect of neighbours in the same cluster as the target user to improve prediction accuracy by reflecting hidden information about his or her social community. The experimental results indicate that the proposed model outperforms other comparison models, including conventional CF, with statistical significance.