As eCommerce is becoming increasingly important, we recruited a small team of researchers from major and not so major players in the field to share views and experiences on theoretical and practical challenges and future directions on eCommerce search and recommendations. The result of our effort, “Challenges and Research Opportunities in eCommerce Search and Recommendations” is published in June 2020 issue of SIGIR Forum.
With the rapid adoption of online shopping, academic research in the eCommerce domain has gained traction. However, significant research challenges remain, spanning from classic eCommerce search problems such as matching textual queries to multi-modal documents and ranking optimization for two-sided marketplaces to human-computer interaction and recom- mender systems for discovery and browsing. These research areas are important for under- standing customer behavior, driving engagement, and improving product discoverability and conversion. In this article we identify the challenges and highlight research opportunities to improve the eCommerce customer experience.
Manos Tsagkias 