Recommender systems: Are users taking the recommendations seriously?

In recent years, we have observed substantial choices provided to consumers due to the rise of e-commerce. The products and the product-related suggestions provided by the various recommender systems have been found to be noteworthy given the enormous data available and information overload. The customers are not worried about the complexity of these algorithms but want the automated process to recommend product-related items of their choices. The study is an attempt to understand whether customers make purchase decisions online using the suggestions recommended across various product lines. For the study, responses of the customers were collected using a structured questionnaire and results were analysed to examine if respondents of different demographic characteristics make purchase related decisions based on the suggestions by recommendation systems.