An agent-based recommender system for developing customized families of products

Electronic markets and web-based content have improved traditional product development processes by increasing the participation of customers and applying various recommender systems to satisfy individual customer needs. Agent-based systems based on agents' roles and tasks can provide appropriate tools to solve product design problems by recommending design knowledge and information. This paper introduces an agent-based recommender system to support designing families of products based on customers' preferences in dynamic electronic market environments. In the proposed system, a market-based learning mechanism is applied to determine the customers' preferences for recommending appropriate products to customers of the product family. We demonstrate the implementation of the proposed recommender system using a multi-agent framework. Through simulated experiments, we illustrate that the proposed recommender system can help determine the preference values of products for customized recommendation and market segment design in various electronic market environments.