Rakuten Technology Conference 2013 "Our Goals and Activities at Rakuten Institute of Technology" Satoshi Sekine (Rakuten)

1. Our Goals and Activities at
Rakuten Institute of Technology
October/26/2013
Satoshi Sekine
Rakuten Institute of Technology
Rakuten Inc.

2. 1
Our goal
How was the
carrot you
got
yesterday?
Today this fresh
lettuce is good
Recommendation
You will take
a vacation?
The travel
agent over
there gives
good service
Affiliation
You are on
diet, but like
sweet food?
This sweet
tomato is good
for your health
Personalization
Old-fashioned
shop owner

3. 2
Our goal
You want to
know the
vegetable in
this photo…
It is an
artichoke.
Image
recognition
You can boil it
and eat it with
mayonnaise
World knowledge
Recently, it is
very popular
among young
people
Opinion mining
Old-fashioned
shop owner

4. 3
Create happy shopping experiences
Hints from a legendary & successful real market
Understand language
Master his products
Understand the customers
World Knowledge
Recognize image, video
Remember for the future
Manipulate knowledge
Think, inference, analysis
Situation adaptation
Friendly service
NLP
Multi-media
Big Data
Semantic
Big Data
I/F
Artificial Intelligence
Infrastructure

5. 4
Research Topics
1. Rakuten Hub Category
2. Category Correction
3. Surf Shopping

6. 5
Research Topics
1. Rakuten Hub Category
2. Category Correction
3. Surf Shopping

7. 6
Different Category Structures of Rakuten Marketplaces

8. 7
Hub and Spoke Model
HUB

9. 8
Global vs. Local
Problem: Culture/Market dependency
We need one uniform DB structure = Global Catalog
Organize globally Adapt Locally
Sports Equipment
PelotaBaseball

10. 9
Overview
attribute value
Product information by
Attributes and values
Product types
Product category for display
is decided by “product
types” and a set of attribute
values
Mapping
R-HC Local Hierarchy

11. 10
Definition of Global Category
135 top categories
Culture/country independent

12. 11
Definition of Attribute (bag)
Set of attributes
for each category

13. 12
Mapping Tool
Specify a category of a marketplace,
and show the corresponding category
of all the Rakuten marketplace

14. 13
Research Topics
1. Rakuten Hub Category
2. Category Correction
3. Surf Shopping

15. 14
2. Category Correction
NOISE!
Users are annoyed, Merchants are in trouble
→ Detecting the misplaced products
→ Reassigning them into the right genres
Many products are assigned into a wrong category

16. 15
Bottle
720ml
Japan
Delicious
Tengumai
light
Japanese Sake
Tengumai
Note:
“Tengumai” is a famous
Japanese sake (rice wine)
The words, which are
assigned into only one
category automatically
dictionary
Definitive Category Words (DCW)
Technology (Modified TF/IDF strategy)

17. 16
Business Contributions
0
10
20
30
40
Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov.
GMS
0
10
20
30
40
Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov.
GMS
(1) 2 big merchants
2 million products (2011/9)
FIX Merchant A FIX
2011 2011
(3) Expanding to more categories
(2) 2 categories, which include 1,000 merchants
1 million products (2011/11)
Merchant B
→ Contributed to GMS
5 million products (2012/10)

18. 17
Research Topics
1. Rakuten Hub Category
2. Category Correction
3. Surf Shopping

19. 18
Online Shopping Offline Shopping
Search-oriented
Good for finding a specific
item
Browsing-oriented
Good for looking around
3. Surf Shopping

20. 19
Motivation
Online Shopping Offline Shopping
Search-oriented
Good for finding a specific
item
Browsing-oriented
Good for looking around

21. 20
Recommendation / Categories / Ranking

22. 21
Associative Relations for SurfShopping
Cheese

23. 22
Cracker
Cheese
Wine
Associative Relations for SurfShopping

24. 23
Grape
Cheese
cake
Pasta
Pizza
Grater
Cracker
Salad
Cheese
knife
Cheese
Wine
Associative Relations for SurfShopping

25. 24
Relation Discovery technology
Yet, your sommelier will suggest
pairings, will explain to you why
this cheese might work better
with that wine.
As our cheese varies from mild
to full flavored, a number of wine
varieties may work…
Tips for Pairing White Wines
With Cheese

26. 25
Our Goal
Technologies for
Happy
Shopping
Experiences

27. 26
… and also please join us!
We are hiring and
looking for internship students
Tokyo New York
Please contact us at dev-rit-coordinator@mail.rakuten.com