ITAA-KSCT Joint Symposium

Application of FEA consumer needs model in real practice, e-commerce: chatbot for fashion product recommendation

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Abstract

With the development of digital technology,e-commerce companies have adopted chatbot services to influence consumers'purchase intentions by providing helpful information and engaging experiences. However, adapting these methods to fashion productrecommendations poses challenges due to the abundance of options. In clothingand textile studies, consumer needs theory provides factors that explainconsumer motivations for choosing a particular design. Lamb and Kallal (1992)suggested the FEA consumer needs model by categorizing consumer needs forapparel design based on functional, expressive, and aesthetic attributes. Therefore,the study aims to configure a taxonomy of e-commerce fashion product attributesthat can fill the gap between chatbot technology and consumer needs theory forfashion product recommendations. The research steps were as follows. First, wetheoretically reviewed the current technology of the chatbot recommender systemin e-commerce. Second, we applied consumer needs theory to configure thetaxonomy of fashion product attributes for the conversational recommendersystem (CRS). Third, we evaluated the CRS framework using an experimentalscenario and validated the effectiveness of consumer needs attributes ine-commerce fashion product recommendations. The CRS performance result showed that the taxonomy of consumer needsattributes could effectively improve the performance of fashion productrecommendations in e-commerce. In general, applying consumer needs attributesoutperforms other cases by achieving a higher success rate, and fewer averageconversation turns. In a short conversation with the chatbot, it was confirmedto be better to ask about consumer needs attributes than product designattributes.

Keywords: chatbot, fashion product, recommendation, FEA consumer needs model, e-commerce

How to Cite:

An, H., Kim, S. & Choi, Y., (2024) “Application of FEA consumer needs model in real practice, e-commerce: chatbot for fashion product recommendation”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 80(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.17692