Methodical Aspects of MCDM Based E-Commerce Recommender System

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the use of an innovative approach based on MCDM methods as the main component of a consumer Decision Support System (DSS) by recommending the most suitable products among a given set of alternatives. This system provides a reliable recommendation to the consumer in the form of a compromise ranking constructed from the five MCDM methods: the hybrid approach TOPSIS-COMET, COCOSO, EDAS, MAIRCA, and MABAC. Each of the methods used contributes significantly to the final compromise ranking built with the Copeland strategy. Chosen MCDM methods were combined with the objective CRITIC weighting method, and their performance was presented on the illustrative example of choosing the most suitable mobile phone. A sensitivity analysis involving the rw and WS correlation coefficients was performed to determine the match between the compromise ranking of the candidates and the rankings provided by each MCDM method. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that all investigated compromise candidate rankings show high convergence with the rankings provided by the particular MCDM methods. Thus, the performed study proved that the proposed approach shows high potential to be successfully used as a central component of DSS for recommending the most suitable product. Such DSS could be a universal and future-proof solution for e-commerce sites and websites, providing advanced product comparison capabilities in delivering a recommendation to the user as a final ranking of alternatives.