Compatibility Family Learning for Item Recommendation and Generation

Compatibility between items, such as clothes and shoes, is a major factor among customer's purchasing decisions. However, learning "compatibility" is challenging due to (1) broader notions of compatibility than those of similarity, (2) the asymmetric nature of compatibility, and (3) only a small set of compatible and incompatible items are observed. We propose an end-to-end trainable system to embed each item into a latent vector and project a query item into K compatible prototypes in the same space. These prototypes reflect the broad notions of compatibility. We refer to both the embedding and prototypes as "Compatibility Family". In our learned space, we introduce a novel Projected Compatibility Distance (PCD) function which is differentiable and ensures diversity by aiming for at least one prototype to be close to a compatible item, whereas none of the prototypes are close to an incompatible item. We evaluate our system on a toy dataset, two Amazon product datasets, and Polyvore outfit dataset. Our method consistently achieves state-of-the-art performance. Finally, we show that we can visualize the candidate compatible prototypes using a Metric-regularized Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (MrCGAN), where the input is a projected prototype and the output is a generated image of a compatible item. We ask human evaluators to judge the relative compatibility between our generated images and images generated by CGANs conditioned directly on query items. Our generated images are significantly preferred, with roughly twice the number of votes as others.Comment: 9 pages, accepted to AAAI 201

On the Design of Sales Support Systems for Online Apparel Stores

Many online stores apply several sales support systems, e.g., recommender systems, sorting and filtering tools, to support buyers during the shopping process. Although, the research highlights the positive effect of such systems, the current study questions its applicability in online stores for products which serve users\u27 needs to be unique like apparel or luxury products. We analyze female users\u27 buying behavior of apparel products in a laboratory setting and find that users with high trendiness undertake in general more search steps. Further, we find that most users rely during their search process on different sorting and filtering as well as on keyword search tools while personalized and non-personalized recommendations play a minor role for users in this industry. Further, we find that users with high trendiness avoid following top seller lists and wear with it -recommendations. Moreover, the provision of top seller rankings does not influence the consumers\u27 product choice

Transforming Digital Marketing with Generative AI

© 2024 The Author(s). Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The current marketing landscape faces challenges in content creation and innovation, relying heavily on manually created content and traditional channels like social media and search engines. While effective, these methods often lack the creativity and uniqueness needed to stand out in a competitive market. To address this, we introduce MARK-GEN, a conceptual framework that utilises generative artificial intelligence (AI) models to transform marketing content creation. MARK-GEN provides a comprehensive, structured approach for businesses to employ generative AI in producing marketing materials, representing a new method in digital marketing strategies. We present two case studies within the fashion industry, demonstrating how MARK-GEN can generate compelling marketing content using generative AI technologies. This proposition paper builds on our previous technical developments in virtual try-on models, including image-based, multipose, and image-to-video techniques, and is intended for a broad audience, particularly those in business managementPeer reviewe

Apparel recommendation system evolution: an empirical review

Purpose: With the developments of e-commerce markets, novel recommendation technologies are becoming an essential part of many online retailers' economic models to help drive online sales. Initially, the purpose of this paper is to undertake an investigation of apparel recommendations in the commercial market in order to verify the research value and significance. Then, this paper reviews apparel recommendation techniques and systems through academic research, aiming to acquaint apparel recommendation context, summarize the pros and cons of various research methods, identify research gaps and eventually propose new research solutions to benefit apparel retailing market. Design/methodology/approach: This study utilizes empirical research drawing on 130 academic publications indexed from online databases. The authors introduce a three-layer descriptor for searching articles, and analyse retrieval results via distribution graphics of years, publications and keywords. Findings: This study classified high-tech integrated apparel systems into 3D CAD systems, personalised design systems and recommendation systems. The authors' research interest is focussed on recommendation system. Four types of models were found, namely clothes searching/retrieval, wardrobe recommendation, fashion coordination and intelligent recommendation systems. The forth type, smart systems, has raised more awareness in apparel research as it is equipped with advanced functions and application scenarios to satisfy customers. Despite various computational algorithms tested in system modelling, existing research is lacking in terms of apparel and users profiles research. Thus, from the review, the authors have identified and proposed a more complete set of key features for describing both apparel and users profiles in a recommendation system. Originality/value: Based on previous studies, this is the first review paper on this topic in this subject field. The summarised work and the proposed new research will inspire future researchers with various knowledge backgrounds, especially, from a design perspective