Extension Method of Association Rules Using Social Network Analysis

Recommender systems based on association rule mining significantly contribute to seller's sales by reducing consumers' time to search for products that they want. Recommendations based on the frequency of transactions such as orders can effectively screen out the products that are statistically marketable among multiple products. A product with a high possibility of sales, however, can be omitted from the recommendation if it records insufficient number of transactions at the beginning of the sale. Products missing from the associated recommendations may lose the chance of exposure to consumers, which leads to a decline in the number of transactions. In turn, diminished transactions may create a vicious circle of lost opportunity to be recommended. Thus, initial sales are likely to remain stagnant for a certain period of time. Products that are susceptible to fashion or seasonality, such as clothing, may be greatly affected. This study was aimed at expanding association rules to include into the list of recommendations those products whose initial trading frequency of transactions is low despite the possibility of high sales. The particular purpose is to predict the strength of the direct connection of two unconnected items through the properties of the paths located between them. An association between two items revealed in transactions can be interpreted as the interaction between them, which can be expressed as a link in a social network whose nodes are items. The first step calculates the centralities of the nodes in the middle of the paths that indirectly connect the two nodes without direct connection. The next step identifies the number of the paths and the shortest among them. These extracts are used as independent variables in the regression analysis to predict future connection strength between the nodes. The strength of the connection between the two nodes of the model, which is defined by the number of nodes between the two nodes, is measured after a certain period of time. The regression analysis results confirm that the number of paths between the two products, the distance of the shortest path, and the number of neighboring items connected to the products are significantly related to their potential strength. This study used actual order transaction data collected for three months from February to April in 2016 from an online commerce company. To reduce the complexity of analytics as the scale of the network grows, the analysis was performed only on miscellaneous goods. Two consecutively purchased items were chosen from each customer's transactions to obtain a pair of antecedent and consequent, which secures a link needed for constituting a social network. The direction of the link was determined in the order in which the goods were purchased. Except for the last ten days of the data collection period, the social network of associated items was built for the extraction of independent variables. The model predicts the number of links to be connected in the next ten days from the explanatory variables. Of the 5,711 previously unconnected links, 611 were newly connected for the last ten days. Through experiments, the proposed model demonstrated excellent predictions. Of the 571 links that the proposed model predicts, 269 were confirmed to have been connected. This is 4.4 times more than the average of 61, which can be found without any prediction model. This study is expected to be useful regarding industries whose new products launch quickly with short life cycles, since their exposure time is critical. Also, it can be used to detect diseases that are rarely found in the early stages of medical treatment because of the low incidence of outbreaks. Since the complexity of the social networking analysis is sensitive to the number of nodes and links that make up the network, this study was conducted in a particular category of miscellaneous goods. Future research should consider that this condition may limit the opportunity to detect unexpected associations between products belonging to different categories of classification.

사회연결망 분석을 활용한 연관규칙 확장기법

연관 상품 추천은 수많은 상품을 다루는 온라인 상거래에서 소비자의 상품 탐색 시간을 줄여주며 판매자의 매출 증대에 크게 기여한다. 이는 주문과 같은 거래의 빈도를 기반으로 생성되므로, 통계적으로 판매 확률이 높은 상품을 효과적으로 선별할 수 있다. 하지만, 판매 가능성이 높은 경우라도 신상품처럼 판매 초기에 거래 건수가 충분하지 않은 상품은 추천에서 누락될 수 있다. 연관 추천에서 누락된 상품은 이로 인해 노출 기회를 잃게 되고, 이는 거래 건수 감소로 이어져, 또 다시 추천 기회를 잃는 악순환을 겪을 수도 한다. 따라서, 충분한 거래 건수가 쌓이기 전까지 초기 매출은 일정 기간 동안 정체되는 현상을 보이는데, 의류 등과 같이 유행에 민감하거나 계절 변화에 영향을 많이 받는 상품은 이로 인해 매출에 큰 타격을 입을 수도 있다. 본 연구는 이와 같이 거래 초기의 낮은 거래 빈도로 인해 잘 드러나지 않는 상품 간의 잠재적인 연관성을 찾아 추천 기회를 확보할 수 있도록 연관 규칙을 확장하기 위한 목적으로 수행되었다. 두 상품 간에 직접적인 연관성이 나타나지 않더라도 다른 상품을 매개로 두 상품 간의 잠재적 연관성을 예측할 수 있을 것이며, 이런 연관성은 주문에서 나타나는 상품 간 상호작용으로 표현될 수 있으므로, 사회연결망 분석을 활용한 분석을 시도하였다. 사회연결망 분석기법을 통해 각 상품의 속성과 두 상품 간 경로의 특성을 추출하고 회귀분석을 실시하여, 두 상품 간 경로의 최단 거리 및 경로의 개수, 각 상품이 얼마나 많은 상품과 연관성을 갖는지, 두 상품의 분류 카테고리가 어느 정도 일치하는지가 두 상품 간의 잠재적 연관성에 미친다는 것을 확인하였다. 모형의 성능을 평가하기 위해, 일정 기간의 주문 데이터로부터 연결망을 구성하고, 이후 10일 간 생성될 상품 간 연관성을 예측하는 실험을 진행하였다. 실험 결과는 모형을 적용하지 않는 경우보다 제안 모형을 활용할 때 훨씬 많은 연관성을 찾을 수 있음을 보여준다.