341 / 2024-04-24 15:30:52

Priority-based approach for seller-buyer matching in E-commerce under uncertain preferences

Two-sided market,Uncertain preferences,Prospect theory,Prioritizing,Stable matching

The rapid evolution of electronic commerce (E-commerce) has led to a reshaping of traditional industries and marketing. An important part of this transformation is seller-buyer matching, a dynamic process within the field of E-commerce. Since few people consider the presence of uncertain preferences and priorities in two-sided matching problems, we introduce a novel approach to fill this research gap. First, we tackle uncertainty in evaluation information caused by subjective goods descriptions and aspirations, using interval numbers to improve matching performance. Second, we incorporate prospect theory to capture the psychological behaviors of customers, aligning matching outcomes with their expectations. What’s more, we have expanded the research on two-sided matching under stable condition while maximizing customer satisfaction by considering priority. We proposed a priority-based method by adjusting the matching satisfaction degree based on preference orderings. We conducted a case study on a used car trading platform. Our approach enhances the efficiency and satisfaction of E-commerce transactions, with experimental results highlighting the significance of considering uncertainty and prioritizing different user needs in E-commerce, which reduces average waiting time and facilitates transactions, confirming the effectiveness of the method.