TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates generally to providing substitutes for a product requested and described in an inquiry and transmitting the substitutes in an order based on the similarity scores to a user submitting the inquiry.

BACKGROUND

Users of an online retail system generally search for a product by submitting an inquiry that includes a brief description, such as one or more keywords, and/or an image, such as a picture or a sketch. Unless the keywords or the image uniquely define an existing product in inventory, it is generally a trial-and-error process for the users to add or change the search criteria in the inquiry to find the most relevant products as proposed substitutes for the requested product. Although a user provides keywords and/or images for the search criteria, other implicit expectations may affect the user's determining whether the proposed substitutes are similar enough. In addition, users generally prefer to see the proposed substitutes in a descending order based on how closely the proposed substitutes match the search criteria. Therefore, systems and methods for determining substitutes for a requested product based on not only the expressed search criteria, but also the context, and providing the substitutes based on the respective rankings are thus desired.

