De-biased Duplication Rate Estimation for E-commerce Catalogs
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Solution Overview
Problem
The presence of multiple product listings for the same product in an e-commerce marketplace leads to consumer confusion and higher prices, negatively impacting the customer experience and market competitiveness.
Innovation Solution
A mechanism to compute a de-biased estimated duplication rate is implemented, which involves selecting a sample of product listings, identifying duplicates, computing probabilities, and assigning weights to estimate the duplication rate, thereby reducing bias and merging duplicate listings.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple product listings are created for the same product, then sellers can offer the same product through different listings, but consumer confusion increases and customer experience deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges duplicate product listings by identifying listings that represent the same product and consolidating them into a single listing. This is achieved through computing duplication rates and using this information to combine redundant listings, thereby maintaining seller versatility while eliminating consumer confusion.
Solution Approach 2:
The system computes duplication rates as feedback information and uses this metric to guide the merging process. The duplication rate computation provides quantitative feedback about the extent of duplicate listings, enabling the system to make informed decisions about which listings to merge.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple product listings for the same product are maintained, then sellers have flexibility, but prices on the marketplace become higher
Solution Approach 1:
By merging duplicate listings, the system reduces the total number of listings for the same product. This consolidation prevents price inflation that occurs when multiple listings compete, thereby maintaining seller flexibility while keeping prices competitive.
3Measurement precision
If a complete audit of all product listings is performed to identify duplicates, then accurate duplication rate is obtained, but computational cost becomes prohibitive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the product catalog into manageable portions and processes listings in batches rather than performing a complete audit of all listings simultaneously. This segmentation approach maintains measurement precision while reducing the computational burden to feasible levels.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs partial audits on sampled portions of the catalog to estimate duplication rates, rather than conducting exhaustive audits on every listing. This partial action approach provides sufficiently accurate measurements without incurring prohibitive computational costs.
4Quantity of substance
If duplicate product listings are not merged, then all seller listings are preserved, but consumer confusion and higher prices persist
Solution Approach 1:
The system selectively merges duplicate listings while preserving legitimate variations. By computing duplication rates and identifying true duplicates, the system consolidates redundant listings to improve customer experience while maintaining the necessary diversity of product offerings.
Data Source
AI summary
A sample of product listings is selected from a product catalog. An audit process is performed to identify other product listings in the product catalog that are duplicates of product listings in the sample. The probability that the product listings would be included in a randomly selected sample of product listings is computed for each of the product listings in the sample and the duplicate product listings. A weight is assigned to each of the listings in the sample and the duplicate listings that is inversely proportional to the computed probability for each listing. The weights may then be utilized to compute a de-biased estimated duplication rate of product listings in the product catalog. The de-biased estimated duplication rate may be utilized to reduce an actual rate of duplication of product listings in the product database.