Matching Recommendation Technologies and Domains

Recommender systems form an extremely diverse body of technologies and approaches. The chapter aims to assist researchers and developers identify the recommendation technology that are most likely to be applicable to different domains of recommendation. Unlike other taxonomies of recommender systems, our approach is centered on the question of knowledge: what knowledge does a recommender system need in order to function, and where does that knowledge come from? Different recommendation domains (books vs condominiums, for example) provide different opportunities for the gathering and application of knowledge. These considerations give rise to a mapping between domain characteristics and recommendation technologies.