1. A computer-based method of generating recommendations for potential purchase by a customer, comprising: generating association rules from a transaction history data set; receiving a recommendation context from a customer; using the recommendation context at a computer system to identify a plurality of candidate recommendation rules from the association rules that match the recommendation context, where each candidate recommendation rule recommends at least one recommended item; determining a score for each candidate recommendation rule using a margin value factor for the recommended item, a confidence value factor for the candidate recommendation rule and a predetermined scoring criteria factor; ranking the plurality of candidate recommendation rules using the score for each candidate recommendation rule to identify at least a highest ranking candidate recommendation rule; and issuing at least the highest ranking candidate recommendation rule as a recommendation.
1. A computer-based method of generating recommendations for potential purchase by a customer, comprising: generating association rules from a transaction history data set; receiving a recommendation context from a customer; using the recommendation context at a computer system to identify a plurality of candidate recommendation rules from the association rules that match the recommendation context, where each candidate recommendation rule recommends at least one recommended item; determining a score for each candidate recommendation rule using a margin value factor for the recommended item, a confidence value factor for the candidate recommendation rule and a predetermined scoring criteria factor; ranking the plurality of candidate recommendation rules using the score for each candidate recommendation rule to identify at least a highest ranking candidate recommendation rule; and issuing at least the highest ranking candidate recommendation rule as a recommendation. 6. The method of claim 1 , where the step of determining a score for each candidate recommendation rule comprises multiplying the margin value factor, the confidence value factor and the predetermined scoring criteria factor to form the score.