Virtual Quant Marketing Seminar - Yuyan Wang
Recommending for a Multi-Sided Marketplace: A Multi-Objective Hierarchical Approach
Dear All,
Our first Virtual Quant Marketing Seminar for the semester is on Monday, January 29 at Noon ET. The speaker will be Yuyan Wang.
The zoom link is below, note that this is a new link.
https://hbs.zoom.us/j/93651241772?pwd=N2dTTC9RZHdoTjhXUjdPOXpkRkNDdz09
Title: Recommending for a Multi-Sided Marketplace: A Multi-Objective Hierarchical Approach
Abstract:
Recommender systems play a vital role in driving the long-term value for online platforms. However, developing recommender systems for multi-sided platforms faces two prominent challenges. First, different sides have different and possibly conflicting utilities. Recommending in this context entails jointly optimizing multiple objectives. Second, many platforms adopt hierarchical homepages, where items can either be individual products or groups of products. Off-the-shelf recommendation algorithms are not applicable in these settings.
To address these challenges, we propose MOHR, a novel multi-objective hierarchical recommender. By combining machine learning, probabilistic hierarchical aggregation, and multi-objective optimization, MOHR efficiently solves the multi-objective ranking problem in a hierarchical setting through an innovative formulation of probabilistic consumer behavior modeling and constrained optimization. We implemented MOHR on one of the world's largest food delivery platforms, and demonstrate that long-term profit maximization can be achieved through a multi-objective approach as we proposed, outperforming existing single-score based approaches. Moreover, the MOHR framework offers managers a mathematically principled tool to make quantifiable and interpretable trade-offs across multiple objectives for long-term profit optimization. Online experiments showed significant improvements in consumer conversion, retention, and gross bookings, resulting in a $1.5 million weekly increase in revenue. As a result, MOHR has been deployed globally as the recommender system for the food delivery platform’s app homepage
The schedule for the rest of the semester is:
Monday, February 12, Noon ET - David Holtz (Berkeley)
Monday, February 26, Noon ET - Sylvia Hristakeva (Cornell)
Monday, March 25, Noon ET - Yanyou Chen (University of Toronto)
Monday, April 1, Noon ET - Jessica Fong (University of Michigan)
Monday, April 8, Noon ET - Song Ma (Yale)
Monday, May 6, Noon ET - Sam Goldberg (Stanford)
We encourage you to use our google calendar to keep track of the talks.