Exploiting Image Content in Location-Based Shopping Recommender Systems for Mobile Users

This paper shows how image content can be used to realize a shopping recommender system for intuitively supporting mobile users in decision making. A mobile user equipped with a camera enabled smart phone combined with Global Positioning System (GPS) capabilities would benefit in using a recommender system for mobile users. This recommender system is queried by image sent by a smart phone together with the smart phone’s GPS coordinates then the system returns a recommended retail shop together with its GPS coordinates, the image similar to the query image and other items on special offer. This recommender system shows a drastic reduction if not elimination of usage of text by mobile users using mobile devices when accessing the system. This paper presents the proposed recommender system and the simulated results of the recommender system. In summary the main contribution of this paper is to show how image retrieval, image content and camera enabled smart mobile device with GPS capabilities can be used to realize a location-based shopping recommender system for mobile users.