Gift recommendation systems: a review

Abstract

Gift exchange is a common practice in people’s lives, with a significant proportion of e-commerce sales in the world attributed to gift purchases. However, gift-giving can be challenging for many individuals, as gift-givers often struggle to accurately predict the recipient’s reactions. To address this issue, personalized recommendation systems can be utilized to facilitate gift selection. This paper reviews psychological, marketing, and anthropological research related to gift exchange and proposes a framework for gift recommendation systems based on the introduced metrics. Subsequently, the paper surveys existing gift recommendation systems literature and evaluates their adherence to the proposed framework. The contributions of this paper are two-fold: (1) Giving a clear understanding of gift exchange practices and proposing a framework for gift recommendation systems, and (2) Reviewing gift recommendation systems literature and examining their adherence to the provided framework.