My understanding is that for online promotions the Apriori algorithm is not used as much as say collaborative filtering algorithms largely because the cost of marketing to the long tail is so cheap online (i.e. the cost of displaying a recommendation or tailoring an ad/promotion to a particular user for a particular product is very low). In other words, Apriori is used to market to the masses by finding association rules with high support and confidence and then creating promotions that exploit this (e.g. discounting the antecedent and marking-up the consequent). Collaborative filtering is used to market to the long tail based on items purchased by similar users or based on items with similar features.
A few questions:
Are there any online B2C applications that remain for Apriori? I've seen it argued that even if you were to market to the masses online, discounting the antecedent and marking-up the consequent doesn't work because it's so easy for the consumer to find the consequent on another site at the lower price. Is there another marketing/promotional scheme which could capitalize on an Apriori analysis?
Are there any online B2B applications for Apriori?
What are some offline applications of Apriori beyond the classic market basket analysis?
