TIGP-SNHCC, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan.
Institute of Systems and Applications, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 300044, Taiwan.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jan 21;21(3):709. doi: 10.3390/s21030709.
Influence Maximization problem, selection of a set of users in a social network to maximize the influence spread, has received ample research attention in the social network analysis domain due to its practical applications. Although the problem has been extensively studied, existing works have neglected the location's popularity and importance along with influential users for product promotion at a particular region in Location-based Social Networks. Real-world marketing companies are more interested in finding suitable locations and influential users in a city to promote their product and attract as many users as possible. In this work, we study the joint selection of influential users and locations within a target region from two complementary perspectives; general and specific location type selection perspectives. The first is to find influential users and locations at a specified region irrespective of location type or category. The second perspective is to recommend locations matching location preference in addition to the target region for product promotion. To address general and specific location recommendations and influential users, we propose heuristic-based methods that effectively find influential users and locations for product promotion. Our experimental results show that it is not always an optimal choice to recommend locations with the highest popularity values, such as ratings, check-ins, and so, which may not be a true indicator of location popularity to be considered for marketing. Our results show that not only influential users are helpful for product promotion, but suitable influential locations can also assist in promoting products in the target region.
影响最大化问题，即在社交网络中选择一组用户以最大化影响传播，由于其实际应用，在社交网络分析领域受到了广泛关注。尽管该问题已经得到了广泛研究，但现有工作忽略了位置的知名度和重要性以及有影响力的用户，而这些对于在基于位置的社交网络中的特定区域进行产品推广是很重要的。现实世界中的营销公司更有兴趣在城市中找到合适的地点和有影响力的用户来推广他们的产品，并吸引尽可能多的用户。在这项工作中，我们从两个互补的角度研究了在目标区域内联合选择有影响力的用户和地点的问题；一般和特定地点类型选择的角度。第一个是在指定的区域内找到有影响力的用户和地点，而不考虑地点类型或类别。第二个视角是在推荐目标区域之外的符合地点偏好的地点，以进行产品推广。为了解决一般和特定的地点推荐和有影响力的用户问题，我们提出了基于启发式的方法，这些方法可以有效地为产品推广找到有影响力的用户和地点。我们的实验结果表明，推荐知名度最高的地点（如评分、签到等）并不总是一个最佳选择，因为这些可能不是营销时考虑的真实地点知名度的指标。我们的结果表明，不仅有影响力的用户有助于产品推广，而且合适的有影响力的地点也可以帮助在目标区域推广产品。
