A survey of sequential recommendation systems: Techniques, evaluation, and future directions

Abstract

Recommender systems are powerful tools that successfully apply data mining and machine learning techniques. Traditionally, these systems focused on predicting a single interaction, such as a rating between a user and an item. However, this approach overlooks the complexity of user interactions, which often involve multiple interactions over time, such as browsing, adding items to a cart, and more. Recent research has shifted towards leveraging this richer data to build more detailed user profiles and uncover complex user behavior patterns. Sequential recommendation systems have gained significant attention recently due to their ability to model users’ evolving preferences over time. This survey explores how these systems utilize interaction history to make more accurate and personalized recommendations. We provide an overview of the techniques employed in sequential recommendation systems, discuss evaluation methodologies, and highlight future research directions. We categorize existing approaches based on their underlying principles and evaluate their effectiveness in various application domains. Additionally, we outline the challenges and opportunities in sequential recommendation systems.