System and method for generating effective recommendations

A system for generating purchase recommendations for a customer, comprising:

• a database for storing a plurality of association rules;
• means for identifying a plurality of candidate recommendation rules from the association rules that match a recommendation context associated with the customer, where each candidate recommendation rule recommends at least one recommended item;
• means for scoring each candidate recommendation rule by calculating an expected margin value for the recommended item;
• means for ranking the expected margin values for the candidate recommendation rules to identify a purchase recommendation for the customer;
• and
• means for generating a selling message for the purchase recommendation by using a user profile to select from a plurality of selling messages based on an attribute of the recommended item associated with the recommended item recommended by the purchase recommendation.

An article of manufacture having at least one recordable medium having stored thereon executable instructions and data which, when executed by at least one processing device, cause the at least one processing device to:

• use a recommendation context associated with a customer to identify a set of candidate association rules that match a recommendation context associated with a customer, where each candidate association rule recommends at least one recommended item;
• calculate a score value for each candidate association rule using an expected margin value for each recommended item and one or more predetermined scoring criteria;
• rank the set of candidate association rules using the score value for each candidate association rule;
• and
• issue at least the candidate association rule having the highest score value as a purchase recommendation to a customer.