More than 50% of a developed nation's Gross Domestic Product is used for establishing and maintaining the exchange of goods and services, and a large share of that is consumed for the search for potential suppliers and consumers. A key variable that determines that effort is the specificity of the objects being exchanged, which is generally on the rise: We produce and consume much more specific objects than a decade ago. In this talk, I will outline how Linked Data can be used to weave a giant graph of information about products, offers, stores, and related facts. This will reduce the effort for business matchmaking on a Web scale. Centerpiece of that graph is the GoodRelations ontology, a global schema for exposing such facts as Linked Data on the Web. GoodRelations is the second most popular conceptual schema on the Web of Data and one of the few examples of academic research in the field that has been adopted by several Fortune 500 companies, like BestBuy or Yahoo. More information on GoodRelations is at http://purl.org/goodrelations/

1. Linked Data in E-Commerce –
The GoodRelations Ontology
ISKO UK Conference on Linked Data
September 14, 2020, London, UK
Prof. Dr. Martin Hepp
Professur für Allgemeine BWL, insbesondere E-Business

2. Matchmaking in Market Economies
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3. Macroeconomic Impact
Transaction Costs:
> 50 % of the
US GDP (1970)
John Joseph Wallis and Douglas C. North:
Measuring the Transaction Sector in the
American Economy, 1870 – 1970
(1986)
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4. Key Driver of Search Costs:
Specificity
How much you loose when you can‘t
use a good for what it was designed.

5. Growth in Specificity
1920: 5168 Types of Goods
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6. Examples
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7. Examples
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8. Examples
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9. Specificity Increases the
Search Space
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10. WWW:
Dramatic Reduction of Search Effort
1993 2010
Lower search costs per search than
ever before in history.
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11. But ….

12. The WWW: A Giant Data Shredder
Source: Recipient:
Structured Data Unstructured Text
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13. What is Linked Data Linked
loves
Susi Martin
1 2 3 4
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14. What is Special About E-Commerce Data?
1
2 RDBMS
3
4 $$$
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15. GoodRelations: A Global Schema for
Commerce Data on the Web
Extraction
Arbitrary Query and Reuse
Manufacturers
Retailers
Payment
Delivery
Product Model Warranty
Master Data Shop Spare Parts &
Offerings Auctions Consumables
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16. On the Shoulders of Giants
A Unified View of Commerce Data
on the Web
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17. GoodRelations Principle: Small Data
Packets Inside Your Page
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18. Albert Einstein on Schema Design
"Make everything as simple as possible, but
not simpler.“
Albert Einstein
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19. Data, Standards, Ontologies
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20. Subtle Distinctions Foster Data Reuse
• Product Offer
– „You can buy or lease my house“
• Store Business entity
– „How many Tesco stores are in London?“
• Product Product Model
– „How many digital cameras by Canon are
listed on eBay“?
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21. Basic Structure of Offers
Object or
Agent 1 Promise
Happening
Compensation Transfer of
Rights
Agent 2
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22. Valuable Types of Links:
Product - Product Model
Photo credits: Flickr.com, available
under CC BY 2.0 by bsabarnowl
Ford T
Data- gr:hasMakeAndModel
sheet
Often via strong, non-URI identifiers like EAN/UPC
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23. Valuable Types of Links:
Offer – Store(s)
XYZ
gr:availableAtOrFrom
for $
99
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24. Valuable Types of Links:
Company – Store(s)
gr:hasPOS
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25. Impact and Success
• One of the few vocabularies implemented
by major businesses out of their own
budget.
• BestBuy, O’Reilly, Overstock.com,…
• Ca. 16 % of all triples as of now
• Supported by Yahoo
• Bing, Google may join
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26. Yahoo Enhanced by SearchMonkey
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27. Developer Resources, Data, Tools
http://purl.org/goodrelations/
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28. Thank you!
http://purl.org/goodrelations/
Prof. Dr. Martin Hepp
Chair of General Management and E-Business
Universitaet der Bundeswehr Muenchen
Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39
D-85579 Neubiberg, Germany
Phone: +49 89 6004-4217
Fax: +49 89 6004-4620
http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/
http://purl.org/goodrelations/
mhepp@computer.org
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29. Both Sides Can Help Build a Bridge
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30. Why is GoodRelations not part of the
Linked Open Data cloud diagram?
Is GoodRelations data linked data
after all?

31. 14.09.2010
Ontology Economics
Hepp, Martin: Possible Ontologies: How Reality Constrains the
Development of Relevant Ontologies, in: IEEE Internet Computing,
31
Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 90-96, Jan-Feb 2007

32. GoodRelations Design Principles
• Keep simple things Lightweight Heavyweight
simple and make Web of Data Web of Data
complex things
possible LOD OWL DL
• Cater for LOD and OWL RDF + a little bit
DL worlds
• Academically sound
• Industry-strength
engineering
• Practically relevant
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33. Incredible Success
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34. GoodRelations #2 of all Web Ontologies
…and this does not yet include the > 10 Mio. offers
from Amazon and eBay!
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35. GoodRelations #2 of all Web Ontologies
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