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Research Problems in Recommender systems

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RASCC 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

Research Problems in Recommender systems

Nitin Mishra
Galgotias University, India
E-mail: [email protected]

Saumya Chaturvedi
Galgotias University, India
E-mail: [email protected]

Aanchal Vij
Galgotias University, India
E-mail: [email protected]

Sunita Tripathi
University of Allahabad, India
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. With continuous growth of web applications around the globe, it is a challenge to
find the suitable information needed for the user in a limited time.Number of handheld mobile
devices is increasing and most of the business revolves around the correct search of the data.
Without a proper recommender system it is very difficult to get required information from the
web applications. Web applications use recommender systems to provide suitable data to users
based on their choices and interests. For different kinds of needs different types of recommender
systems have been proposed. Two most basic types of recommender systems are collaborative
filtering recommender system and content based recommender system. Sometimes these two
recommender systems are combined to increase the efficiency of a recommender system The
generated new recommender system is known as hybrid recommender system.
The purpose of this paper is to help readers understand the basics of recommender systems.
This paper identifies key areas of research openly available for new researchers. After reading
this paper new researchers can understand basic problems of recommender systems which need
improvement and hence they can make those problems their area of research.

1. Introduction
Recommender systems help us in getting the data which we need. It filters information which
is are needed by the user. Today we have a lot of data in any system.[1, 2] The example
of systems in which recommenders are needed is YouTube Netflix or any other E-Commerce
platforms like Flipkart and Amazon. The scenario which we are facing today is that data is
increasing and screen size is decreasing. Screen size we mean to say that initially systems were
used from desktop and laptop which were around 15 inches and now it is being used by mobile
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RASCC 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

Figure 1. Model of recommendation process

which ranges from 4 to 7 inches.[3, 4, 5, 6, 7] When the user searches for any item and it is not
available in first 5 or 10 searches he leaves the system and tries that item on another system.
The biggest irony can be an item is available but didn’t come on the top of the searches which
user did. so in this case what will happen is he will buy that item from another computer E-
Commerce platform rather than the platform which was unable to provide a recommendation.
A recommendation system can increase sales of a particular application. Many E-Commerce
platforms did field because of lack of good recommendation system on their platforms. A good
recommender system also staves users time and keep the user engaged in the system resulting
in higher revenue.[8]
Many top-notch companies which are using recommendation systems are Google, YouTube
Netflix, Flipkart, Amazon, Prime, gaana.com and many more. Every system comes with its
advantages and disadvantages. So recommendation systems also face many problems which are
yet to be solved effectively.
So the purpose of writing this paper is to make the Reader aware of recommender systems and
its major techniques. The paper will also explore research problems in recommender systems
based on the extensive study done by us using the papers which are referenced in the reference
section. In this paper, we have identified some key areas of research which are open to new
researchers. so students who are in their Masters and PhD can take this area and take t the topic
as their area of research and contribute to the development and improvement of recommender
systems of the new generation.
We have included papers from early 1997 to 2020. More than 50 papers have been included
in the study. We have not only identified problems but the latest solutions to problems papers
have also be added for researchers to understand the problem in detail.

2. GENERAL CONCEPTS
Recommender systems is a system that helps users to choose items which they may need.
different artificial intelligence techniques and machine learning techniques are applied to achieve
this output.[9, 10]
Some examples of recommender systems can be google.com, amazon.com, Netflix ,and other
popular e-commerce,music and video portals available online.Since these systems have millions
of items so they can not function properly without a good recommender system.
In a recommendation-system application, there are two classes of entities, which we shall

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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

refer to as users and items. The formal definition of the recommender system is:
• C: The set of all users
• S: The set of all possible items that can be recommended, for example, video, songs and
books.
• U: A utility function that measures the usefulness of a specific item s S to user c C, i.e.,
U: C X S
• R, where R is a totally ordered set.
The space S of feasible items can be very large, ranging in lots of hundreds or even thousands
and thousands of items in some applications, such as recommending books or CDs. Similarly, a
person’s area can also be very large—millions in some cases. [11]
In recommender machine how useful the item is determined by its rating. Rating is a measure
of item liked by the user. As it is given by the user hence reliability of this rating has extra
value in understanding the choices of the user. The rating can be taken in different ways. some
common forms of rating are it is asked based on 1 to 5 scales as in case of apps in Google Play.
It can also ask based on the scale of 1 to 10 as used by many rating methods. Many customer
service agencies use this scale of rating. Whatever rating scale you are going to use your one
and describes like and others end describes the extent of dislike.[12]
User profile can be generated by storing its traits like age gender area email mobile and other
things. Item profile can be generated based on features of the item. Like in case of a book it is
the language author Jonah cost publisher etc. In the case of television, it is the brand feature
power consumption and many features which can be used to create the profile. The way we
create the profile has an important impact on the recommendation system.[13] Ratings are done
on a subset of data rather than entire data. Rating matrix is created between user and item
and this becomes the heart of the recommender system. The way the rating matrix is analysed
defines the recommender system. Different domains use Different techniques for extracting data
from the user-item matrix. [14, 15, 5]
Recommender systems are recommends different items to the user based on whatever machine
learning or artificial intelligence techniques they have used on the rating matrix.[15] Good
recommender systems improve with user feedback. A good recommender system also performs
good recommendation even though very few ratings are there. The accuracy of a good
recommender systems increases as the history of user increases in the system. [16]

3. TECHNIQUES USED IN RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM

The Recommender systems are categorised on the basis of rating techniques used by the system.
The way a systems takes ratings or predicts user preferences defines the Recommender systems.
Figure 2 describes the basic techniques used in recommender systems. In the coming sections,
we are going to describe them. In this paper, we have given a brief description of the basic
techniques used in recommender systems. Other techniques are also there which are combined
to generate hybrid recommender systems. Figure 4 describes them.

3.1. Collaborative Filtering

The collaborative filtering system is a system where we take input from the user and use those
inputs to create relations with other users and items.[10, 14, 15]
For example, any user in a collaborative filtering system is asked to rate a particular item.
Similarly, other users also rate different items. In this way, we get a user-item rating matrix.
The rating done by the user gives historical data and choices of the user. Through choices of
users, we can create a profile of the user. Then we can calculate what new items we can purchase
on the basis of his history and his profile.

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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

Figure 2. Techniques used in Recommender systems

Some examples of collaborative filtering systems are movie recommendation systems and
social networks.[4]

3.2. Content based

Content-based system requires the item to the user based on the description of the item rather
than the history of the user.[9, 17] These types of recommender systems are used in newspapers
and article recommendation systems. These recommender systems may have little information
about the user. Figure 3 explains the process of recommendation.
These recommender systems do not have a history of the user. The most common technique
used by content-based recommender systems is item profiling. This popularity of the item is
recorded. User profiling is also done sometimes with little basic information about the user which
system has. Item profiles are based on the properties of items. The recommender system uses
the properties to recommend items to different users. Unlike collaborative filtering recommender
systems, they do not have rating information. User profiles can also be created from the likes
and dislikes of users to a particular item. [9, 17]
When we want to recommend any item to the user, user interests are compared against item
properties. This is also known as content features of items which includes the following:[6, 18]

• The system contains a big database of the item to be recommended. This database consists
of features of items. This database is known as an item profile database.
• Users provide little information about their preference likes and dislikes to the system and
with this little information the system builds a user profile.
• The recommendation is done on the basis of a comparison of item profile with user interest.

One can make better-personalised recommendations by means of utilising the elements of gadgets
and users. An object profile is defined by way of its essential features. For example, a book can
be described using its title, genre,language, publisher, cost etc. Using the weighting procedure,
similarity can be calculated between items. In some domains, we can represent elements by
means of boolean values while in others we can represent the values using a set of restrained
values. Consider the example of the newspaper where we analyze the newspaper articles on the
basis of the exceptional form of topics. Boolean cost is indicative of whether a phrase is present

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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

Figure 3. Content based Process

in the article or not. Integer cost may want to define the categorical way the range of time of
word appears in an Article. This method gives a successful recommendation in content-based
recommender systems without using explicit ratings.[19, 20]

3.3. Hybrid Recommendation System

This system recommends on the basis of the mixture of some techniques. This is one of the recent
trends in the recommendation system. The table given shows different types of recommendation
techniques. The Hybrid makes use of a combination of these recommendation techniques. The
recommendation system by Facebook seems to make use of all these techniques. The hybrid
recommendation takes advantage of all the techniques but once should be very careful as hybrid
may involve a lot of computation and may give conflicting results.[6, 21, 22]
Figure 4 describes some popular techniques combined to generate hybrid recommender
systems. These techniques are combined with each other when they improve the results of
the recommendation.

4. RESEARCH PROBLEMS
These recommendation systems have a great future. Today some problems are yet to be solved
by the research community to make research more efficient. Some of the problems which we
understand can be solved are listed below. Figure 5 Shows all the research problems we are
going to address in the later sections. These research problems can give ideas to work in the
area.

4.1. Gathering Known Ratings for Matrix

It has been observed that most of the users do not give any ratings. So a research problem
arises that how to know whether they are satisfied with the product and how much. There are
two ways of taking ratings. When is explicit like asking them after they have purchased or gone
through any item. Another way which is predicting their ratings for a particular item based on
their preferences on some other item. This method is known as an implicit method of collecting
ratings. According to our research, explicit and implicit methods have sufficient gap which gives
an opportunity for researchers to start research in this domain.[24, 25]

4.2. Cold Start Problem

A cold start problem is a problem that arises when no information is found about the user or item
in the system.[7] collaborative filtering recommender system which needs mandatory information

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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

Figure 4. Techniques used by Hybrid Recommendation[23, 4, 21]

Figure 5. Research Problems in Recommender systems

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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

about user and item before recommending fails. We can have three different subproblems in the
domain of cold start problems. The first problem arises when we do not have any information
about the new user who is entering the system. this only happens when a user joins the system
for the first time. An example can be if you are joining Amazon or Flipkart for the first time
this kind of problem arises. This problem is known as the new user cold-start problem.[26]
The second problem arises when we introduce a new item to the system. this item is very
original of its kind. The recommender system is unable to find any ratings associated with this
item. The collaborative filtering system which needs user-item rating Matrix in order to give a
recommendation is unable to start and the problem is known as cold start item problem. The
third problem arose when we launched the system for the first time. In this case, we do not
have either any user information or any item information. In other words, we do not have any
user-item matrix of ratings which is required for collaborating recommender systems to work
properly. This problem is known as the cold start system problem. In cold start problems,
famous content-based solutions can be applied to solve the problem.[27, 28] Other solutions are
using a combination of various machine learning techniques.[29, 30]

4.3. Sparsity Problem

In the recommendation system, it has been noticed that most users use the system but do not
give rating for feedback to the system in a proper way. So even though we may have many users
using the recommender system various Times, it is possible that we have very few ratings from
those users about different items which they have liked or purchased or even disliked. Rating
seems useless to users, so they avoid giving it and sometimes may lead to false rating such as
providing 5 stars( Considered Best for them) or 1 stars (Considered non likely item), without
even noticing what kind of product it is. This is taken as input by the recommender system,
which further displays the unwanted results to the user, which may lose the interest of the user in
that platform, and lead to non-efficient working. As rating has no significance as per the users,
they sometimes don’t even give to bulk of products, which again leads to the same problem. [31]
Sparsity problem is a problem which arises due to sparsity of rating matrix. here we are
talking about the user-item rating matrix. In mathematical terms user-item rating matrix
is sparse, It gives rise to a unique problem known as sparsity problem in recommender
systems.[32, 33].
This problem is the problem of collaborative filtering recommender systems domain. This
problem gives unique opportunities to new researchers to find new ways to predict this missing
data. [34]

4.4. Scalability
Scalability is the property of the system which defines weather system will be able to cope up
when the system grows. [34] For example, in case of recommender systems, scalability can be
understood as a situation where a recommender system is performing very well in case of few
users like 1000 users but as the user grows to 10000 or 100000 it starts performing a way which
is not desirable. When the system faces scalability issues it becomes slow it starts feeling it start
giving problems which it has never given when a load of users recommendation were less.
The scalability issues can be divided into two parts hardware scalability and software
scalability. the hardware is scalability is about the increase of hardware to solve the scalability
problem. For example, one can increase processor, RAM and server configuration to solve the
problem. But only hardware air capacity increase cannot solve the problem.[34]
Software scalability is about writing algorithms and using methods which work well when
hardware configuration is increased as needed in future. although this is a major problem which
is not as easy as it seems to be. because there are algorithms which perform very well when
the amount of data on which they have to operate is small but as the data increases they start

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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1717 (2021) 012002 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1717/1/012002

performing inefficiently. The accuracy of the prediction decreases as the data increases. some
algorithms are not able to utilise the increased efficiency of the hardware hence create a problem
of scalability.[32]
So this is also an open area of research in recommender systems. as we know incoming
Technology we are going for parallel processing and Hadoop and other architectures and big
data. so this problem needs to be addressed. So it gives upcoming researchers a new area to
start the research and solve this problem using an innovative method.[33]

4.5. Over Specialization problem

This problem arises if the recommended items are too similar to each other. One such example
is that a user buys grocery items from a shopping website on the regular basis, and whenever
he/she opens the website, the recommender system recommends only sugar, may be of different
brands (basis on the maximum purchase), on seeing same item again and again and not any
unique suggestion may lead user to switch the shopping website whose recommender system
offers better, interesting and personalized results for the user. So in this problem basically,
The user loses interest in recommended items, one solution to this problem is recommendation
diversification. In this method we list all the items that are dissimilar but it is of interest to the
user[3].

4.6. Lack of Data

Perhaps the biggest issue facing recommender systems is that they need a lot of data to effectively
make recommendations. In the world of the recommender system, it is common practice to use
a publicly available dataset from a different environment in order to evaluate the efficiency
of recommendation algorithms. [35] These data sets are very important and are used as a
benchmark to develop new recommendation algorithms. Most of the top companies like Google,
Amazon, make good recommendation because they are having a lot of consumer user data so
recommender system firstly needs consumer/item user data (from different sources), then it
must perform some statistical analysis based on some procedure (User behaviour observation
or events), and then the Recommendation algorithm does its work. If we will be having more
consumer/item data we will be in a situation with the help of the recommender algorithm to
have better recommendations[36, 37].

4.7. Changing data

The most important challenge in the case of recommender systems is changing data i.e. that
they are usually subjective towards the old/past and face problems while dealing with new
or recommending new. Many recommendation systems collect user data or make use of user
past behavior but depending on user past behaviour analysis is not an efficient tool for a good
recommendation because users trends and interests are always changing so it would become very
difficult for the recommendation system to react in a changing environment of data. To show you
what I mean, usually a newlywed couple checks for dresses, beauty products and lifestyle items
but with the passage of time and change of situations their interest changes to baby products
such as diapers, baby foods etc, which is entirely different from the previous search which may
confuse the recommender system and may lead to display results which are no more interest of
the buyer. [38]

4.8. Changing user preferences

The next important challenge in the recommender system is changing user preferences and
making coordination with rapidly changing preferences of the user. As we observed till now
that user intention towards browsing some item may be different at different interval of time so

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recommendation systems which are completely based on user preferences may perform wrong
recommendations for eg. Suppose today I am browsing books for myself but tomorrow I may
browse sports item for myself or It can be said that a 10 year kid is searching for multiple
items without any thought just to scroll without any intention of purchase, at that time the
recommendation system based on user preferences may recommend me the wrong items, so
making coordination with frequently changing user preferences is the most important issue in
recommendation system[38].

4.9. Unpredictable items

The next important challenge in the recommender system is unpredictable items based on
different rankings. Item recommender used to find out the ranked list of predictable list of items
and unpredictable list of items. It may include unusual products which existed before or have
relevance with the existing ones, in this scenario the system may not be able to recommend the
product to any of the users, and thus will be dumped for ages , considering Amazon launched
a new product for selling, i.e AI based Robot. Since this belongs to all new category, so no
browsing history of the category found which leads to no recommendations for the user. In
the same manner, movie recommendations fall into this category of the recommendation of
unpredictable items. Content-based filtering technique addresses this problem.[39]

5. Conclusion
This paper has introduced recommender systems to new researches. This paper has also
identified key problems which need research in recommender systems. This paper can help
PhD and Masters students in choosing their area of research. The research gap is already
presented in this paper to form different problems of recommender systems.
The recommendation system finds its utility in major areas of web Applications. As these
problems get solved more and more useful recommendation systems will become. With more
reliable recommendations web applications will be more intelligent and usable.

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