Machine Learning Approach for Prediction of the Online User Intention for a Product Purchase

The deployment of self-learning computer algorithms that can automatically enhance their performance via experience is referred to as machine learning in ecommerce and is a crucial trend of the retail digital transformation. Machine learning algorithms can be unambiguously trained by analysing big datasets, identifying repeating patterns, relationships, and anomalies among all of this data, and creating mathematical models resembling such associations. These models are improved when the algorithms analyse ever-increasing amounts of data, providing us with useful insights into specific ecommerce-related events and the links between all the variables that underlie them. A tool that has been quite effective in studying current affairs, predicting future trends, and making data-driven decisions. The present work investigates the implementation of machine learning algorithms to predict the user intention for purchasing a product on a specific store's website. An Online Shoppers Purchasing Intention data set from the UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository was used for this investigation. In this study, two classification-based machine learning algorithms i.e. Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithm and Random Forest algorithm were used. SGD algorithm was used for first time in prediction of the online user intention. The results showed that the Random Forest resulted in the highest F1-Score of 0.90 in contrast to the Stochastic Gradient Descent algorithm