Comparative Analysis of Neural Retriever-Reranker Pipelines for Retrieval-Augmented Generation over Knowledge Graphs in E-commerce Applications
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Abstract
Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed Natural Language Processing (NLP), enabling complex information retrieval and generation tasks. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a key innovation, enhancing factual accuracy and contextual grounding by integrating external knowledge sources with generative models. Although RAG demonstrates strong performance on unstructured text, its application to structured knowledge graphs presents challenges: scaling retrieval across connected graphs and preserving contextual relationships during response generation. Cross-encoders refine retrieval precision, yet their integration with structured data remains underexplored. Addressing these challenges is crucial for developing domain-specific assistants that operate in production environments. This study presents the design and comparative evaluation of multiple Retriever-Reranker pipelines for knowledge graph natural language queries in e-Commerce contexts. Using the STaRK Semi-structured Knowledge Base (SKB), a production-scale e-Commerce dataset, we evaluate multiple RAG pipeline configurations optimized for language queries. Experimental results demonstrate substantial improvements over published benchmarks, achieving 20.4% higher Hit@1 and 14.5% higher Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR). These findings establish a practical framework for integrating domain-specific SKBs into generative systems. Our contributions provide actionable insights for the deployment of production-ready RAG systems, with implications that extend beyond e-Commerce to other domains that require information retrieval from structured knowledge bases.