• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.101-116
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• 2015

Recently, due to the development of smart devices and social media, vast amounts of information with the various forms were accumulated. Particularly, considerable research efforts are being directed towards analyzing unstructured big data to resolve various social problems. Accordingly, focus of data-driven decision-making is being moved from structured data analysis to unstructured one. Also, in the field of recommendation system, which is the typical area of data-driven decision-making, the need of using unstructured data has been steadily increased to improve system performance. Approaches to improve the performance of recommendation systems can be found in two aspects- improving algorithms and acquiring useful data with high quality. Traditionally, most efforts to improve the performance of recommendation system were made by the former approach, while the latter approach has not attracted much attention relatively. In this sense, efforts to utilize unstructured data from variable sources are very timely and necessary. Particularly, as the interests of users are directly connected with their needs, identifying the interests of the user through unstructured big data analysis can be a crew for improving performance of recommendation systems. In this sense, this study proposes the methodology of improving recommendation system by measuring interests of the user. Specially, this study proposes the method to quantify interests of the user by analyzing user's internet usage patterns, and to predict user's repurchase based upon the discovered preferences. There are two important modules in this study. The first module predicts repurchase probability of each category through analyzing users' purchase history. We include the first module to our research scope for comparing the accuracy of traditional purchase-based prediction model to our new model presented in the second module. This procedure extracts purchase history of users. The core part of our methodology is in the second module. This module extracts users' interests by analyzing news articles the users have read. The second module constructs a correspondence matrix between topics and news articles by performing topic modeling on real world news articles. And then, the module analyzes users' news access patterns and then constructs a correspondence matrix between articles and users. After that, by merging the results of the previous processes in the second module, we can obtain a correspondence matrix between users and topics. This matrix describes users' interests in a structured manner. Finally, by using the matrix, the second module builds a model for predicting repurchase probability of each category. In this paper, we also provide experimental results of our performance evaluation. The outline of data used our experiments is as follows. We acquired web transaction data of 5,000 panels from a company that is specialized to analyzing ranks of internet sites. At first we extracted 15,000 URLs of news articles published from July 2012 to June 2013 from the original data and we crawled main contents of the news articles. After that we selected 2,615 users who have read at least one of the extracted news articles. Among the 2,615 users, we discovered that the number of target users who purchase at least one items from our target shopping mall 'G' is 359. In the experiments, we analyzed purchase history and news access records of the 359 internet users. From the performance evaluation, we found that our prediction model using both users' interests and purchase history outperforms a prediction model using only users' purchase history from a view point of misclassification ratio. In detail, our model outperformed the traditional one in appliance, beauty, computer, culture, digital, fashion, and sports categories when artificial neural network based models were used. Similarly, our model outperformed the traditional one in beauty, computer, digital, fashion, food, and furniture categories when decision tree based models were used although the improvement is very small.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.49-61
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• 2009

This article provides training exercises for executives into interpreting subroutine maps of executives' thinking in processing business and industrial marketing problems and opportunities. This study builds on premises that Schank proposes about learning and teaching including (1) learning occurs by experiencing and the best instruction offers learners opportunities to distill their knowledge and skills from interactive stories in the form of goal.based scenarios, team projects, and understanding stories from experts. Also, (2) telling does not lead to learning because learning requires action-training environments should emphasize active engagement with stories, cases, and projects. Each training case study includes executive exposure to decision system analysis (DSA). The training case requires the executive to write a "Briefing Report" of a DSA map. Instructions to the executive trainee in writing the briefing report include coverage in the briefing report of (1) details of the essence of the DSA map and (2) a statement of warnings and opportunities that the executive map reader interprets within the DSA map. The length maximum for a briefing report is 500 words-an arbitrary rule that works well in executive training programs. Following this introduction, section two of the article briefly summarizes relevant literature on how humans think within contexts in response to problems and opportunities. Section three illustrates the creation and interpreting of DSA maps using a training exercise in pricing a chemical product to different OEM (original equipment manufacturer) customers. Section four presents a training exercise in pricing decisions by a petroleum manufacturing firm. Section five presents a training exercise in marketing strategies by an office furniture distributer along with buying strategies by business customers. Each of the three training exercises is based on research into information processing and decision making of executives operating in marketing contexts. Section six concludes the article with suggestions for use of this training case and for developing additional training cases for honing executives' decision-making skills. Todd and Gigerenzer propose that humans use simple heuristics because they enable adaptive behavior by exploiting the structure of information in natural decision environments. "Simplicity is a virtue, rather than a curse". Bounded rationality theorists emphasize the centrality of Simon's proposition, "Human rational behavior is shaped by a scissors whose blades are the structure of the task environments and the computational capabilities of the actor". Gigerenzer's view is relevant to Simon's environmental blade and to the environmental structures in the three cases in this article, "The term environment, here, does not refer to a description of the total physical and biological environment, but only to that part important to an organism, given its needs and goals." The present article directs attention to research that combines reports on the structure of task environments with the use of adaptive toolbox heuristics of actors. The DSA mapping approach here concerns the match between strategy and an environment-the development and understanding of ecological rationality theory. Aspiration adaptation theory is central to this approach. Aspiration adaptation theory models decision making as a multi-goal problem without aggregation of the goals into a complete preference order over all decision alternatives. The three case studies in this article permit the learner to apply propositions in aspiration level rules in reaching a decision. Aspiration adaptation takes the form of a sequence of adjustment steps. An adjustment step shifts the current aspiration level to a neighboring point on an aspiration grid by a change in only one goal variable. An upward adjustment step is an increase and a downward adjustment step is a decrease of a goal variable. Creating and using aspiration adaptation levels is integral to bounded rationality theory. The present article increases understanding and expertise of both aspiration adaptation and bounded rationality theories by providing learner experiences and practice in using propositions in both theories. Practice in ranking CTSs and writing TOP gists from DSA maps serves to clarify and deepen Selten's view, "Clearly, aspiration adaptation must enter the picture as an integrated part of the search for a solution." The body of "direct research" by Mintzberg, Gladwin's ethnographic decision tree modeling, and Huff's work on mapping strategic thought are suggestions on where to look for research that considers both the structure of the environment and the computational capabilities of the actors making decisions in these environments. Such research on bounded rationality permits both further development of theory in how and why decisions are made in real life and the development of learning exercises in the use of heuristics occurring in natural environments. The exercises in the present article encourage learning skills and principles of using fast and frugal heuristics in contexts of their intended use. The exercises respond to Schank's wisdom, "In a deep sense, education isn't about knowledge or getting students to know what has happened. It is about getting them to feel what has happened. This is not easy to do. Education, as it is in schools today, is emotionless. This is a huge problem." The three cases and accompanying set of exercise questions adhere to Schank's view, "Processes are best taught by actually engaging in them, which can often mean, for mental processing, active discussion."