Constructing Hierarchical Product Categories for E-Commerce by Word Embedding and Clustering

The objective of the study is to generate the product hierarchical categories in e-commerce, particularly for e-commerce giants such as Taobao or Jingdong. For e-commerce websites the amount of products is huge, and a hierarchical structure is necessary for consumers to browse them. We find that there are two problems in the current websites: firstly, the hierarchy is shallow; there are often too many products in the same category, it is hard for a consumer browse them. Secondly, the hierarchy is constructed manually, when new products come, it is hard to update the hierarchy. Based on the product description analysis, it is possible to solve the problems. In this study, we will use the deep learning word embedding technology and clustering algorithm to construct a deeper product hierarchy automatically. The results will help the customers to choose products with a more clear structure and also help the e-commerce company to save the maintaining effort on the product hierarchy.