Determining the optimal number of cases to combine in a case-based reasoning system for eCRM

Case-based reasoning (CBR) often shows significant promise for improving effectiveness of complex and unstructured decision making. Consequently, it has been applied to various problem-solving areas including manufacturing, finance and marketing. However, the design of appropriate case indexing and retrieval mechanisms to improve the performance of CBR is still challenging issue. Most of previous studies to improve the effectiveness for CBR have focused on the similarity function or optimization of case features and their weights. However, according to some of prior researches, finding the optimal k parameter for k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) is also crucial to improve the performance of CBR system. Nonetheless, there have been few attempts which have tried to optimize the number of neighbors, especially using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. In this study, we introduce a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the number of neighbors to combine. This study applies the new model to the real-world case provided by an online shopping mall in Korea. Experimental results show that a GA-optimized k-NN approach outperforms other AI techniques for purchasing behavior forecasting.