NLP and Statistical Analysis for E-commerce Category Matching

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Solution Overview

Problem

Current systems for identifying matching categories and generating targeted offers in e-commerce lack efficiency in leveraging natural language processing and statistical analysis to accurately classify products and customers, leading to suboptimal offer targeting.

Innovation Solution

The integration of natural language processing and statistical analysis to classify item descriptions into tiers and analyze transaction data, enabling the creation of profiles for merchants and customers, and automatically generating targeted offers based on affinity scores and consumer behavior.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If natural language processing and statistical analysis are integrated to classify items and analyze transactions, then offer targeting accuracy is improved, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveoffer targeting accuracyVSAvoidsystem complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Measurement precisionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system segments the complex analysis task into distinct modules: a natural language processing component that classifies item descriptions into categories and tiers, and a statistical analysis component that processes transaction data. This segmentation allows each module to specialize in specific functions, improving overall accuracy while managing complexity through modular design.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces an intermediary layer that bridges natural language processing and statistical analysis. This intermediary processes and standardizes data from both sources, enabling them to work together effectively. The intermediary translates unstructured item descriptions into structured categories that can be correlated with transaction patterns, thereby improving targeting accuracy without directly increasing the complexity of core algorithms.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Measurement precision

If detailed natural language processing is applied to item descriptions, then product classification accuracy is improved, but processing time increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveproduct classification accuracyVSAvoidprocessing time
Core Design Contradiction:
Measurement precisionVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary classification of item descriptions into categories and tiers before the actual offer generation process. By pre-processing and organizing item data into structured formats with defined hierarchies, the system reduces the computational burden during real-time offer targeting, thereby maintaining high classification accuracy while reducing processing time for subsequent operations.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

3Adaptability or versatility

If comprehensive transaction data analysis is performed to create customer profiles, then offer personalization is improved, but data processing complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveoffer personalizationVSAvoiddata processing complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent applies local quality by creating customer profiles that are tailored to specific segments rather than treating all customers uniformly. The system identifies distinct customer segments based on transaction patterns and applies customized offer strategies to each segment. This approach improves personalization effectiveness by focusing analysis on relevant local characteristics of each customer group rather than attempting to model every individual's complete behavior pattern.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #3Local quality

Data Source

PatentUS9691085B2Systems and methods of natural language processing and statistical analysis to identify matching categories
Publication Date: 2017.06.27 VISA INTERNATIONAL SERVICE ASSOCIATION
  • US9691085B2 patent drawing
  • US9691085B2 patent drawing
  • US9691085B2 patent drawing

AI summary

Combining the natural language processing of product descriptions and statistical analysis of payment data to classify consumers based on products purchased and merchants based on products sold. Systems and methods use natural language processing techniques to interpret the descriptions of item level purchase data to classify products that have been purchased by customers into micro-categories. Statistical deviation methods are applied to the payment data to calculate normalized mean product cost, after removing outliers. After determining the micro-categories of the products purchased and the mean product cost of the purchased products, the system and methods classify consumers and merchants into categories based at least in part on the product micro-categories, mean costs, and relative volume of product types sold by merchants to predict which consumers are likely to purchase from which merchants.