Fuzzy association rule mining approach to identify e-commerce product association considering sales amount

Online stores assist customers in buying the desired products online. Great competition in the e-commerce sector necessitates technology development. Many e-commerce systems not only present products but also offer similar products to increase online customer interest. Due to high product variety, analyzing products sold together similar to a recommendation system is a must. This study methodologically improves the traditional association rule mining (ARM) method by adding fuzzy set theory. Besides, it extends the ARM by considering not only items sold but also sales amounts. Fuzzy association rule mining (FARM) with the Apriori algorithm can catch the customers’ choice from historical transaction data. It discovers fuzzy association rules from an e-commerce company to display similar products to customers according to their needs in amount. The experimental result shows that the proposed FARM approach produces much information about e-commerce sales for decision-makers. Furthermore, the FARM method eliminates some traditional rules considering their sales amount and can produce some rules different from ARM.