Evaluating Preference-Based Feedback in Recommender Systems

Anecdotal evidence suggests that while real-world customer-buying models can be translated for online e-commerce scenarios, perhaps they should not be (because of the effort these models impose on the user). Currently the vast majority of recommender systems require the user to engage in a lengthy dialogue of information elicitation in order to locate the best product/service for them. We suggest that such lengthy dialogues are inappropriate in many e-commerce settings, and that alternative models are needed that minimise the cost to the user, while maintaining recommendation quality.