The state-of-the-art in personalized recommender systems for social networking

With the explosion of Web 2.0 application such as blogs, social and professional networks, and various other types of social media, the rich online information and various new sources of knowledge flood users and hence pose a great challenge in terms of information overload. It is critical to use intelligent agent software systems to assist users in finding the right information from an abundance of Web data. Recommender systems can help users deal with information overload problem efficiently by suggesting items (e.g., information and products) that match users’ personal interests. The recommender technology has been successfully employed in many applications such as recommending films, music, books, etc. The purpose of this report is to give an overview of existing technologies for building personalized recommender systems in social networking environment, to propose a research direction for addressing user profiling and cold start problems by exploiting user-generated content newly available in Web 2.0

Social commerce: how should portuguese companies invest in it?

JEL: L81; M31The massification and globalization of the internet and social media democratized the access to information and changed behaviours and consumption habits. In this context, this thesis pretends to evaluate the impact and degree of acceptance of social commerce in Portugal, by focusing on a sample of 521 consumers who were surveyed through an online survey administered via internet, to which they voluntarily responded. The majority of the surveyed was male young adults, working for others and with a monthly income higher than 1,000€. Since social commerce is still in its infancy stage, there is a huge potential for growth and expansion, and therefore, Portuguese companies should take it in consideration in their future marketing plans and strategies. One of the main findings of this study was that the habit of using daily social networks does not seem to be much valued at the time of the purchase decision, as the great majority of those surveyed affirmed that they never bought anything with direct influence of social networks or directly through these. Furthermore, after publishing a post on the social networks expressing interest or doubts about a brand, most respondents admitted to be fully open to be addressed by a responsible or manager of that brand for customer care purposes. Additionally, about one third of the respondents confessed to have already bought or would like to purchase products or services directly from an online store on Facebook.A massificação e globalização da internet e redes sociais democratizou o acesso à informação e alterou comportamentos e hábitos de consumo. Neste contexto, esta tese pretende avaliar o impacto e o grau de aceitação do social commerce em Portugal, concentrando-se em uma amostra de 521 consumidores que foram inquiridos através de um questionário online aplicado via internet, ao qual responderam voluntariamente. A maioria dos entrevistados era jovens adultos do sexo masculino, que trabalhavam por conta de outrem e com um rendimento mensal superior a 1000 €. Como o social commerce ainda está numa fase embrionária, há um enorme potencial de crescimento e expansão, e, portanto, as empresas portuguesas devem ter isso em consideração nos seus planos e estratégias de marketing futuros. Uma das principais conclusões deste estudo foi a de que o hábito de usar as redes sociais diariamente parece não ser muito valorizado no momento da decisão de compra, já que a grande maioria dos entrevistados afirmou que nunca comprou nada com influência direta das redes sociais ou diretamente através destes. Além disso, após a publicação de um post nas redes sociais que expresse interesse ou dúvidas sobre uma marca, a maioria dos entrevistados admitiu estar totalmente aberto para ser abordado por um gerente responsável da respetiva marca para fins de atendimento ao cliente. Além disso, cerca de um terço dos entrevistados confessou já ter comprado ou gostaria de comprar produtos ou serviços diretamente de uma loja online no Facebook

Social Credibility: Trust Formation in Social Commerce

Trust formation in informal social commerce, also considered lateral exchange markets (LEMs) on social media platforms, has different dynamics from e-commerce and traditional consumerto‐ consumer (C2C) exchange. These online markets are massive in scale; thus, it is an important phenomenon in consumer research. With a holistic perspective, we conducted in-depth interviews with Instagram consumers and sellers. Our research is among the first to reveal an empirical understanding of the critical dynamics of trust formation in LEMs within social commerce and contribute to theory by introducing a novel dimension termed social credibility. Social credibility surpasses the source credibility evaluations one step further from assessing the source itself to assess the credibility of the individuals who contribute to the source\u27s reputation, such as reviewers, followers, and customers. Thus, we define social credibility as customers’ assessments of LEM sellers’ credibility through perceived homophily with other reviewers, followers, and customers

Web Data Extraction, Applications and Techniques: A Survey

Web Data Extraction is an important problem that has been studied by means of different scientific tools and in a broad range of applications. Many approaches to extracting data from the Web have been designed to solve specific problems and operate in ad-hoc domains. Other approaches, instead, heavily reuse techniques and algorithms developed in the field of Information Extraction. This survey aims at providing a structured and comprehensive overview of the literature in the field of Web Data Extraction. We provided a simple classification framework in which existing Web Data Extraction applications are grouped into two main classes, namely applications at the Enterprise level and at the Social Web level. At the Enterprise level, Web Data Extraction techniques emerge as a key tool to perform data analysis in Business and Competitive Intelligence systems as well as for business process re-engineering. At the Social Web level, Web Data Extraction techniques allow to gather a large amount of structured data continuously generated and disseminated by Web 2.0, Social Media and Online Social Network users and this offers unprecedented opportunities to analyze human behavior at a very large scale. We discuss also the potential of cross-fertilization, i.e., on the possibility of re-using Web Data Extraction techniques originally designed to work in a given domain, in other domains.Comment: Knowledge-based System

Factors and characteristics that influence consumers’ participation in social commerce

AbstractPurpose – The popularity of social networks has created business opportunities to the electronic commerce environment, being recently named as social commerce. The purpose of this paper is to analyze – from the perspective of the consumer – the main factors and characteristics (personal or related to the products bought) that have influenced consumers to participate in social commerce buying, recommending, comparing and sharing information about products and services in online marketplace and communities. Design/methodology/approach – The study is characterized as an exploratory descriptive research, operationalized through a survey, applied to 229 participants of the social network Facebook. The research involves a qualitative stage for identifying potential variables that influence the participation of consumers in social commerce, followed by a quantitative one, including data collection procedures, validation and data analysis. Findings – The results show trust, perceived usefulness and information quality as the factors that most influence consumer participation in social commerce, being trust in the website the main predictor. Concerning the characteristics, the findings also show that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics use ratings, recommendations and comments online more intensively than books, travel, household appliances and fashion products. Research limitations/implications – As limitations of the study, the authors highlight the small number of interviews conducted during the qualitative stage, which may have left out other relevant factors of the analysis on consumers’ participation in social commerce. Another limitation refers to the selection of the participants of the study; all members of the social network Facebook are identified by the contact net of the authors – though it has been tried to enlarge this contact list by requesting the respondents to share the questionnaire link with their acquaintances, we should be cautious about the generalization of the results. Originality/value – The study proposes an instrument to identify factors and characteristics that are taken into consideration by the consumers when participating in social commerce. Such a tool can be replicated by firms included in this type of commerce, in order to evaluate the behavior and perception of their customers about their performance in the online environment. This study also highlights trust, information quality and perceived usefulness of the website as the most influencing factors of the consumers’ participation in social commerce. In addition, the authors identified that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics seem to use more intensively ratings, recommendations and comments online provided by other people. This fact supports the research literature that (positive or negative) online recommendations influence the consumers purchase behavior, reducing uncertainties about the products and increasing credibility and trust

Digital Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents: Problematic Practices and Policy Interventions

Examines trends in digital marketing to youth that uses "immersive" techniques, social media, behavioral profiling, location targeting and mobile marketing, and neuroscience methods. Recommends principles for regulating inappropriate advertising to youth

Improving customer strategy in social media to develop collaboration and create value

Sosiaalisen median lähestymistapa on muuttunut viime vuosina staattisesta katselusta interaktiivisuutta vaativaan yhteistyöhön. Sosiaalisen median käyttäjät eivät välttämättä ole organisaation asiakkaita. Yritykset tai organisaatiot eivät voi määrätä käyttäjän viestintää sosiaalisessa mediassa. Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli parantaa kuluttaja-asiakkaiden yhteistoimintaa sosiaalisessa mediassa huomioimalla asiakkaan näkykulma lisäämällä lähestymistapaan inhimillisyyttä, joka huomioi tunteiden merkityksen sekä kehittämällä mallin, joka mahdollistaa sidosryhmien yhteistyön arvoa luotaessa. Tutkimusmenetelmänä käytettiin kyselyä, joka toteutettiin tilaajan näkökulmasta siten että, saatiin vastaukset pää- ja sivututkimuskysymykseen. Tietojen hankinta toteutettiin laadullisilla menetelmillä määriteltyjen kuluttaja asiakkaiden keskuudessa. Opinnäytetyö on suunniteltu tätä tutkimusta ja tutkimusongelmaa varten. Ensisijainen tutkimustieto kerättiin verkkopohjaisella asiakaskyselyllä. Toissijainen tutkimustieto kerätiin tilaajan aiemmin tilaamasta tutkimuksesta. Verkkopohjaista hakua käytettiin tietojen hankkimiseen analytiikan avulla saavutettavista hyödyistä valituissa yrityksissä. Tutkimus osoitti, että yleisin tapa osallistua sosiaaliseen mediaan on vieraileminen verkkosivuilla ja sisällön katseleminen. Tutkimuksen vastaajat odottivat, että valituksella voitaisiin saavuttaa vastavuoroisuutta. Vastaajat halusivat saada valituksen seurauksena lisähyötyjä, tai kokea, että heidän palautettaan arvostettaisiin. Tutkimus osoitti että, asiakasnäkemyksen analysointi on muuttunut kokonaisvaltaisesti analytiikan käytön myötä. Vielä ei kuitenkaan ole olemassa kattavaa tapaa hyödyntää analytiikkaa. Hyötyjen saavuttaminen analytiikan avulla on riippuvaista yrityksen tarpeista, vaatimuksista ja tavoitteista. Opinnäytetyö tarjoaa viitekehyksen, jota tilaaja voi käyttää luomalla oman arvonkehitysmallin.The approach of social media has changed last years from static viewing to interactive collaboration. Users of social media are not necessarily customers of the organizations. Companies or organizations cannot dictate the user’s communication in the social media. The objective of the thesis was to improve collaboration with consumer customer in the social media in the way that it takes the customers’ perspectives into account and increases human touch by observing feelings and emotions and developing a framework that enables stakeholder to collaborate on the co-creation of value. The methodology of the research included surveys to identify answers to the main and sub research questions from the commissioners’ perspective. Data acquisition was carried out by using qualitative methods among defined consumer customers of the commissioning company. Thesis methods were designed for this specific research and research problem. Primary data was gathered by customer questionnaire via a web-based survey. Secondary data was gathered from previous research ordered by the commissioner. The web-based search was used for data acquisition about the achieved benefit of using analytics in selected companies. The study showed that the most common way of participation in social media is visiting websites and viewing contents. The respondents expected that a complaint should create reciprocity. The respondents also expected to gain additional benefits or experience that their feedback would be valued. Using analytics has changed customer insight analysis comprehensively. Yet, there is no all-inclusive way to use analytics. It depends on the company’s needs, requirements and objectives how to use analytics to achieve benefit. The research in this master’s thesis provides a collaboration framework that the commissioner can utilize to create a platform for value co-creation

SOCIAL MEDIA: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF ITS EFFECT ON STUDENTS’ SHOPPING HABITS

The adoption of social media by students in Nigeria has remained a fast and welcome development and has been used in the transfer of title in many ways. The reason for this study is to examine the effect of social media advertisement on students’ shopping habit in Nigeria, as well as examine the effect of social media credibility on students’ shopping habits in Nigeria. The research focused on internet users (students) from five selected Local Government Councils (Oyi, Idemili North and South, Onitsha North and South) particularly those who use social media sites. Data was collected using questionnaires and interviews from the population of internet users of the selected five selected Local Government Councils. A sample of 150 internet users was drawn from the population. Regression statistics was used to analyse the established variables. The test conducted show that social media advertisement and credibility has significant effect on students’ shopping habit. Based on the outcome of the findings, the authors recommend that advertisers should give all the details that are needed for easy patronage of the products. In addition, users of social media in promotion of products, especially manufacturers and middlemen, should know that the credibility of any social platform creates an added advantage to the profit of that organization.  Article visualizations

Fashion Conversation Data on Instagram

The fashion industry is establishing its presence on a number of visual-centric social media like Instagram. This creates an interesting clash as fashion brands that have traditionally practiced highly creative and editorialized image marketing now have to engage with people on the platform that epitomizes impromptu, realtime conversation. What kinds of fashion images do brands and individuals share and what are the types of visual features that attract likes and comments? In this research, we take both quantitative and qualitative approaches to answer these questions. We analyze visual features of fashion posts first via manual tagging and then via training on convolutional neural networks. The classified images were examined across four types of fashion brands: mega couture, small couture, designers, and high street. We find that while product-only images make up the majority of fashion conversation in terms of volume, body snaps and face images that portray fashion items more naturally tend to receive a larger number of likes and comments by the audience. Our findings bring insights into building an automated tool for classifying or generating influential fashion information. We make our novel dataset of {24,752} labeled images on fashion conversations, containing visual and textual cues, available for the research community.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, This paper will be presented at ICWSM'1