Abstract: A method for acquiring, and for displaying predictions of, subjective consumer-appraisals of items. The method allows a consumer to insert the item into an ordered list of his previously appraised items, so that the list continues to reflect his relative preference of the listed items. Likewise, the appraisal value predicted for a given consumer and item is displayed as its anticipated position on an ordered list of the consumer's previously appraised items.

Abstract: A marketing system and method predicts the interest of a user in specific items—such as movies, books, commercial products, web pages, television programs, articles, push media, etc.—based on that user's behavioral or preferential similarities to other users, to objective archetypes formed by assembling items satisfying a search criterion, a market segment profile, a demographic profile or a psychographic profile, to composite archetypes formed by partitioning users into like-minded groups or clusters then merging the attributes of users in a group, or to a combination. The system uses subjective information from users and composite archetypes, and objective information from objective archetypes to form predictions, making the system highly efficient and allowing the system to accommodate “cold start” situations where the preferences of other people are not yet known.

Abstract: A system and method of selectively recommending, for a user selected from a group of users, items such as movies sampled by one or more of the users in the group but not sampled by the selected user. The recommendations are based on other items previously sampled by the user and preferably on the availability of the items from a source, for example the availability of movies from a video store. A scalar rating is defined for each item sampled by the selected user to represent the reaction of the selected user to that item. The selected user is successively paired with the users in a group for whom have been defined scalar ratings for at least some of the items sampled by the selected user to determine the difference in ratings for items sampled by both members of that pair. An agreement scalar is generated for each pair representing the overall rating agreement between the members of each successive pair.

Abstract: A system and method of predicting, for a user selected from a group of users, the reactions of the selected user to items sampled by one or more users in the group but not sampled by the selected user. The predictions are based on other items previously sampled by that user. A scalar rating is defined for each item sampled by the selected user to represent the reaction of the selected user to that item. The selected user is successively paired with other users in the group who have defined scalar ratings for at least some of the items sampled by the selected user to determine the overall difference in ratings for items sampled by both members of each successive pair. One or more of the other users are designated as predicting users and a weighting value is assigned to each of the predicting users based on the overall difference in ratings between that predicting user and the selected user.