Towards a conceptual model for holistic recommendations

In this paper we introduce the concept of holistic recommendations, namely a set of suggestions generated by exploiting a more comprehensive representation of the user that relies on the personal information coming from different heterogeneous data sources (e.g., social networks, wristbands, smartphones, etc.) and considers the diverse relations and constraints among the data encoded in the profiles. Specifically, in this article we provide the following contributions: I) we outline a conceptual model for providing holistic recommendations built on the ground of such richer user profiles; ii) we present some challenges related to holistic recommendations that can inspire further research in the field.