A case study on the effectiveness of recommendations in the mobile internet
Dietmar Jannach, Kolja Hegelich · 2009
This paper summarizes the initial findings of an experimental evaluation of how recommender systems affect the buying behavior of online customers. The study was conducted in the context of a large-scale, commercial Mobile Internet platform, from which end users can download games to their mobile phones. Item recommendations were presented to platform visitors in different navigational situations; the recommendation lists were either determined with the help of different recommendation algorithms or based on nonpersonalized ranking techniques. The study is based on a sample of more than 155,000 different customers who visited the portal during a four week evaluation period. The analysis revealed that the use of personalized recommendations instead of non-personalized ones leads to a significant increase in viewed and sold items in different navigational situations and to an overall sales increase.