Nikos Manouselis et al. 433
In this context, the e-market recommendation algorithm can propose interesting e-markets to
the members of the VC. For example, a new member of the VC can submit its priorities
regarding the quality criteria that a desired e-market should obey to. According to the
presented recommendation algorithm, the members of the VC that have previously evaluated
existing e-markets, and which have similar properties with the new member, will be identified.
Then, the evaluations that these members have provided will be considered, and a prediction of
how much each e-market in the directory is suitable for the new member will be estimated.
Finally, a ranked list of proposed e-markets will be recommended to the new member. An
overview of this scenario is graphically illustrated in Figure 1.
ALGORITHM
VIRTUAL AGRIBUSINESS COMMUNITY
(interested in e-markets with organic products)
Figure 1. Example of e-market recommendation for an organic agriculture business VC
E-MARKETs evaluations
PROVIDED BV VC
MEMBERS (stored according
to expECEM)
(using WebQuaI)
DATABASE WITH
DESCRIPTIONS
OF E-MARKETs