Product recommendation using online reviews with emotional preferences

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel recommendation method using online reviews with emotional preferences for facilitating online purchase decisions. This leads to better use of information-rich online reviews for providing users with personalized recommendations. Design/methodology/approach A novel method is developed for producing personalized recommendations in online purchase decision-making. Such a method fuses the belief structure and the Shapley function together to effectively deal with the emotional preferences in online reviews and adequately tackle the interaction existent between product criteria with the use of a modified combination rule for making better online recommendations for making online purchase decisions. Findings An example is presented for demonstrating the applicability of the method for facilitating online purchase. The results show that the recommendation using the proposed method can effectively improve customer satisfaction with better purchase decisions. Research limitations/implications The proposed method can better utilize online reviews for satisfying personalized needs of consumers. The use of such a method can optimize interface design, refine customer needs, reduce recommendation errors and provide personalized recommendations. Originality/value The proposed method adequately considers the characteristics of online reviews and the personalized needs of customers for providing customers with appropriate recommendations. It can help businesses better manage online reviews for improving customer satisfaction and create greater value for both businesses and customers.