Recommender Systems: An Introduction

In this age of information overload, people use a variety of strategies to make choices about what to buy, how to spend their leisure time, and even whom to date. Recommender systems automate some of these strategies with the goal of providing affordable, personal, and high-quality recommendations. This book offers an overview of approaches to developing state-of-the-art recommender systems. The authors present current algorithmic approaches for generating personalized buying proposals, such as collaborative and content-based filtering, as well as more interactive and knowledge-based approaches. They also discuss how to measure the effectiveness of recommender systems and illustrate the methods with practical case studies. The final chapters cover emerging topics such as recommender systems in the social web and consumer buying behavior theory. Suitable for computer science researchers and students interested in getting an overview of the field, this book will also be useful for professionals looking for the right technology to build real-world recommender systems.

Dietmar Jannach is a Chaired Professor of computer science at Technische Universitt Dortmund, Germany. The author of more than one hundred scientific papers, he is a member of the editorial board of the Applied Intelligence journal and the review board of the International Journal of Electronic Commerce. Markus Zanker is an Assistant Professor in the Department for Applied Informatics and the director of the study program Information Management at Alpen-Adria Universitt Klagenfurt, Austria. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and cofounder and director of ConfigWorks GmbH. Alexander Felfering is University Professor at Technische Universitt Graz Austria. His research in recommender and configuration systems was honored in 2009 with the Heinz Zemanek Award. Felfering has published more than 130 scientific papers, is a review board member of the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and is a cofounder of ConfigWorks GmbH. Gerhard Friedrich is a Chaired Professor at Alpen-Adria Universitt Klagenfurt, Austria, where he is head of the Institute of Applied Informatics and directs the Intelligent Systems and Business Informatics research group. He is an editor of Al Communications and an associate editor of the International Journal of Mass Customisation.