User Grouping for Sharing Services with Capacity Limit

Abstract

Sharing a service among multiple users could bring benefit to users by reducing their service price and also benefit service providers by allowing them to make more profit. Shared services usually have a capacity limit. To construct a win-win situation between users and providers through service sharing, it is necessary to reasonably organize users with similar service requests into groups under the limits of group sizes. This paper explores methods to enable user grouping for sharing services with the limit on the group size. Based on user request descriptions and evaluation, a connection relation is built to present which two users could be in a group. Semi-groups can be derived from the connection relation and two grouping schemes satisfying the group size limit are further determined through proposed algorithms to meet different service expectations. Finally, a case study and a simulation are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in grouping users to provide higher service benefits to both users and providers.