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An Internet retailing data framework for supporting consumers and business processes
Abstract
This paper describes an action research case study dealing with the development of an internet retail store with advanced capabilities. The research focuses on the exploitation of information generated through consumer–system interaction by the virtual retailer (i.e. sales, navigation and personal consumer data). The results effectively support the business processes, consumers and product suppliers. To that end, an internet retailing data framework was developed during the user requirements capturing phase of the ACTIVE (Advertising and Commerce Through the Internet in the context of the Virtual Enterprise) project, as a means of structuring the system's information requirements and data processing mechanisms. The purpose of this framework is to describe in detail what consumer information the system needs to collect and to advise the virtual retailer (i.e. ACTIVE's administrator) how to use the available software components to exploit this information in order to effectively support consumers and business processes. Despite the fact that the proposed framework is tailored to the ACTIVE characteristics and needs, it can also be utilized by other virtual retailers to effectively support their key stakeholders (i.e. customers and suppliers).
... While researchers covered a variety of recommendations, the most commonly mentioned website optimization concepts include minimalist graphic design that appears professional and exhibits the quality and uniqueness of the product(s) sold, easily recognized navigation instruments, minimized download delay (e.g., removing bandwidth intensive images, sounds, and videos), and a uncomplicated ordering process is the third most mentioned e-tail marketing tactic cited by 12 of the 31 sources in this area. The mining of customer and click stream data involves the use of computer software to collect customer information and customer activity on the e-tail website and may be described as both overt and covert marketing activities (Bloomberg, 2006) (Vrechopoulos, et al., 2003). ...
... Pughe -53 (Vrechopoulos, et al., 2003). Click-stream mining technology records the navigation patterns and activity of each website visitor in a database that may be accessed and manipulated by the etailer ) (Van den Poel & Buckinx 2003) (Vrechopoulos, et al., 2003). ...
... Pughe -53 (Vrechopoulos, et al., 2003). Click-stream mining technology records the navigation patterns and activity of each website visitor in a database that may be accessed and manipulated by the etailer ) (Van den Poel & Buckinx 2003) (Vrechopoulos, et al., 2003). ...
The relevance of action research as a research method in the information systems (IS) discipline is not disputed. Nevertheless, the extent to which action research is published in good journals is infrequent enough to indicate a serious problem. In this article, we explore the reasons underlying this situation and make recommendations aiming to increase both the practice and the publication of action research. To identify both the barriers to undertaking action research and potential ways of overcoming those barriers, we survey 218 authors of 120 articles demonstrating empirical action research published in 12 of our good journals during the period 1982-2016. We received 70 usable responses. We also surveyed 52 editors of selected IS journals and received 25 usable responses. Our findings are revealing as they indicate both genuine barriers associated with action research and some apparent barriers that are in reality misperceptions or myths. In reflecting on these, we emphasize the special qualities of action research. We also reflect on the critical role that action research plays in the IS field as a whole and its potential for further contributions to research and practice, given the strong and close connections with organizational problem contexts that action research requires. Finally, we make a number of recommendations that are designed to increase the incidence of action research in the IS discipline
The purpose of this study is to find out the important factors and efficient strategies concerning fashion mobile marketing. This study contributes to the effect on shopping behavior of m-commerce consumer applying technology acceptance model(TAM) in the mobile fashion merchandise shopping environment. The areas of study interest are mobile commerce interface characteristics, flow, perceived usefulness, ease of use, attitude, purchase intention. To fulfill the study objectives, a total of 406 questionnaires were conducted to the customers with first-hand experience with merchandise in mobile commerce. The judgement sampling method was employed on sample population ages from 20s to 30s over two month period. Based on the results of the above-mentioned path analysis, The result showed that different factors affect acceptance intention of the fashion M-commerce. The result which extended TAM relationship, excepted affects in perceived ease of use by navigation and Flow, perceived usefulness by perceived ease of use and purchase intention by perceived ease of use considers from all relationships the effect put out. On this wise, mobile commerce interface characteristics needs provider of basic contents to fashion mobile commerce technology acceptance and suggested the ability which diffuses a fashion mobile transactions.
Purpose
– A paucity of research on the motivations and goals of vendors who develop electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) tools and systems exists in the literature. This is an important gap in the literature because many eCRM systems are products of outsourcing (to vendors). This paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
– This exploratory case study focuses on an international van‐based service franchise and the experiences of the vendor, company, and franchisees as they design, develop, and implement certain eCRM tools. Participants include the president and founder of the eCRM vendor company, the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and marketing director from the franchisor company, and six franchisees. This paper is triangulated via personal interviews, member‐checking interviews, and relevant literature from information systems (IS) and marketing.
Findings
– Specifically, this paper sheds light on the role and influence of the vendor in the design, development, and delivery of eCRM tools. Managerial implications include: customer relationship management (CRM) requires a balance of online and offline activities; vendors may distort the balance between online and offline marketing efforts; and strategic policy should center on the priorities of the franchisor, franchisees, and end customers.
Originality/value
– This paper fulfills an identified knowledge gap by capturing the “voice” of the vendor who has historically been overlooked in the literature. The research insights are particularly salient for company managers and marketing practitioners alike. Study limitations and suggestions for future research are also discussed.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on customer relationship management (CRM) to obtain a comprehensive framework of mutually exclusive CRM research areas and sub‐areas free of all potentially disruptive factors (plethora of CRM definitions, personal judgments, etc.).
Design/methodology/approach
– The keywords reported in 396 CRM articles published during the period 2000‐2006 are used to uncover first a great number of detailed keyword sub‐groups and, by subject summation, the CRM‐related research areas. This classification scheme is considered unbiased, in contrast with any direct classification of articles alone among CRM research areas fixed in advance.
Findings
– An up‐to‐date conceptual and functional CRM framework emerges, consisting of a total of nine distinct research areas having their own weights, importance and popularity among the research community. Newly emerging CRM research areas are self‐identified as attracting the interest of the researchers and managers.
Originality/value
– Keywords are activated, for a first time, as an added value characteristic reflecting genuinely the authors' beliefs about the subject content fields of their articles, important enough to reveal a self‐supported and self‐weighted unbiased and exhaustive CRM framework, useful to researchers and marketing practitioners. The paper offers strong evidence that e‐CRM is too complex to be comprehensively classified by mere procedures and simple criteria alone.
Examining action research publications in leading Information Systems journals as a particular genre of research communication, we develop the notion of style composition to understand how authors structure their arguments for a research contribution. We define style composition as the activity through which authors select, emphasize, and present elements of their research to establish premises, develop inferences, and present contributions in publications. Drawing on this general notion, we identify a set of styles that is characteristic of how IS action researchers compose their argument. Premise styles relate to the dual goals of action research through practical or theoretical positioning of the argument; inference styles combine insights from the problem-solving and the research cycles through inductive or deductive reasoning; and contribution styles focus on different types of contributions--experience report, field study, theoretical development, problemsolving method, and research method. Based on the considered sample, we analyze the styles adopted in selected publications and show that authors have favored certain styles while leaving others underexplored; further, we reveal important strengths and weaknesses in the composition of styles within the IS discipline. Based on these insights, we discuss how action research practices and writing can be improved, as well as how to further develop style compositions to support the publication of engaged scholarship research.
Action research is seen as one of the solutions to the lack of relevance in the field of information systems because action research has as its primary goal to combine successful intervention in real-world settings with the development of scientific knowledge. The rigor of action research, however, has been questioned regularly. The IS field lacks a set of generally agreed guidelines and criteria to assess action research. This paper builds on earlier efforts to arrive at a set of principles and criteria to assess the rigor of action research and provides the first comprehensive evaluation of 30 recently published AR field studies in mainstream IS journals to test whether such a set of principles and criteria proves to be useful. The objective is to provide a reference framework on which AR design choices can be made and AR papers can be reviewed. The framework proposed in this paper has proven to be applicable to different types of AR and many of its principles are followed in action research field studies. Based on the framework and the review of the field studies, recommendations are made to increase the rigor of action research to achieve more relevance.
This manuscript is conceptually based in the areas of e-consumer behaviour and e-services marketing. Specifically, it examines the phenomenon of waiting in terms of the role it plays in the functionality of service delivery over the internet and the effect waiting has on how consumers behave online. A number of previous studies have identified a link between the ‘quickness’ of web sites and the site's overall functionality. The existing knowledge on consumer waiting behaviour in the general context of traditional or ‘off-line’ services and in the specific context of online services is reviewed. A qualitative empirical study of consumer behaviour in online waiting situations is undertaken. The factors that determine how e-consumers behave when faced with online waiting situations are identified and explored.
This review paper is meant to provide some insight to the relation between operations research and the management of electronic services. We use the term electronic services, within the broader e-business context, to refer to any service that is delivered to the customer via electronic means, mainly the Internet as a new channel to communicate with customers, but also through mobile and other digital communications. During the last years we have experienced an explosion in the development of electronic services, which is creating abundant opportunities for operations research (OR) applications, required to empower several types of technology-mediated interactions, exploit the large-scale digital data sources, and automate the recurring operational decisions. In this paper we summarise the various aspects in which operations research may support the management of electronic services, taking into account the different characteristics of alternative electronic media, such as the Internet, mobile communications, interactive television etc.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of e‐security seals on web sites and their relative impact on e‐commerce firm reputation in influencing customers' perceptions of trust in a service provider.
Design/methodology/approach
Two interrelated empirical studies are conducted to evaluate the use and impacts of e‐security seals in e‐commerce. An exploratory study methodology investigates the use of e‐security seals and a questionnaire survey is used to gauge consumer knowledge of seals.
Findings
Using survey data from 211 web users, the results show that 106 respondents are cognitive and affective of e‐security seals. The results also provide further clarification of the relationship between e‐security seals and sales effectiveness. The findings point towards a positive belief by consumers in e‐security seals.
Research implications
Third‐party e‐security seals organisations should undertake more promotional activities and advertising to educate comsumers about the use and benefits of e‐security seals.
Originality/value
An important issue in e‐commerce is how trust is developed between consumers and e‐vendors. This paper investigates the use of e‐security seals and their influence on consumer confidence in the online environment.
This work elaborates the impacts of strategically constructed silos that are not byproducts of flagging cross-departmental cooperation or the cumulative effect of decades of decentralized command and control. Rather, these silos are strategically intended structures within organizations. Most significantly, the substantive theory of strategically constructed silos and their impact on customer service contributes to the field by illustrating the presence and consequence of silos occurring in suboptimal conditions. The existence of silos has implications that extend far beyond the retail area. A key take-away from this research is that contrary to how most customer service processes are designed, not all customer-company interactions are alike. As shown in the data, interaction types vary both in regard to the degree of knowledge needed by retail employees to fully serve customers, and the routine or nonroutine nature of the interaction. This is an important finding since it directly relates to whether the existence of a silo is appropriate (or optimal) for a specific interaction or task. Additionally, the findings suggest the role that a task's "routine-ness" plays is secondary to the degree of specialized knowledge needed by retail employees to meet customer expectations.Understanding the various customer-company interaction types and how each interaction type may be affected by silos is crucial for designing customer experiences that will sustain over time. Likewise, identifying customer-company interaction types correctly and then subsequently developing strategies to support these interaction types is critical for both customer experience management (CEM) initiatives and customer relationship management (CRM) system design within the company. This work provides an overview of the implications of strategically constructed silos occurring in suboptimal conditions and provides recommendations for diagnosing customer-company interactions based on interaction type. By identifying strategically constructed silos as an intended structure of the company, the model elaborated here works to deliver prescriptive and specific strategies for managers and employees' use as they attempt to improve their firm's customer-company interaction outcomes.
Información tecnológica para aplicarla a la administración, la importancia de la información computarizada y su aplicación en los negocios, educación, gobierno, milicia, medicina y el hogar. El comercio electrónico y la información en el internet son estratégicos para la planeación y el proceso de reingeniería de los negocios.
The World Wide Web possesses unique characteristics which distinguish it in important ways from traditional commercial communications environments. Because the Web presents a fundamentally different environment for marketing activities than traditional media, conventional marketing activities are becoming transformed, as they are often difficult to implement in their present form. In this paper, we discuss the idea that these changes portend an evolution in the "marketing concept" and argue that in order for marketing efforts to be successful in this new medium, a new business paradigm is required. In this new approach, the marketing function must be reconstructed to facilitate electronic commerce in the emerging electronic society underlying the Web. 2 A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce The World Wide Web, the first and current networked global implementation of a hypermedia computer-mediated environment (CME), is increasingly being recognized as an important emerging...
While a growing number of companies are interested in developing an Internet presence, there is still a great deal of confusion about it and what this new medium has to offer to the advertising community. The purpose of this study is to gain preliminary insights into advertisers' perceptions of the Internet and, hopefully, assist companies in understanding and using the Internet more effectively. This paper presents the results of a national sample of advertisers concerning perceptions of the Internet as a marketing tool. It is hoped that this first look can clarify some of the uncertainties advertisers are facing during the infancy of this new medium.
The World Wide Web possesses unique characteristics that distinguish it in important ways from traditional commercial communications environments. Because the Web presents a fundamentally different environment for marketing activities than traditional media, conventional marketing activities are becoming transformed, as they are often difficult to implement in their present form. In this article, we discuss the idea that these changes portend an evolution in the ''marketing concept'' and argue that in order for marketing efforts to be successful in this new medium, a new business paradigm is required. In this new approach, the marketing function must be reconstructed to facilitate electronic commerce in the emerging electronic society underlying the Web.
One of the profound consequences of the on-going information revo-lution is its influence on how economic value is created and extracted. Specifically, when buyer-seller transactions occur in an information-defined arena, information is accessed and absorbed more easily, and arranged and priced in different ways. Most important, the information about a product or service can be separated from the product or service itself. In some cases, it can become as critical as the actual product or service in terms of its effect on a company's profits. Consider how many wholesalers sell used cars in Japan. Until the mid-1980s, the vehicles were transported weekly to one of several established lo-cations, where they were sold to retailers at live auction. This traditional method was inherently in-efficient because at any given auction, only about 45% of the inventory sold. But in 1985, Masataka Fujisaki, an entrepre-neur, saw an opportuni-ty to transform the mar-ketplace; he created a proprietary computer and satellite communi-cations system called AUCNET. Each week, sellers call AUCNET with a list of the cars they're offering. Then an AUCNET inspector travels to the sellers' lots, veri-leffrey F. Raypoit is an assistant professor of business administration in the Service Management Interest Group at the Harvard Business School in Boston, Mas-sachusetts. His research explores the impact of informa-tion technologies on information-based products and services, with a focus on service quality in technology-intensive customer interfaces, fohn J. Sviokla is an associ-ate professor at the Harvard Business School. He studies how companies can augment their products, services, channels, and management processes to increase profits and customer retention, particularly with the aid of new information technologies.
A study of Web banner advertising that measured attitudes and behavior found important attitudinal shifts even without click-through. By using Millward Brown's BrandDynamics™ system, along with other copytesting measures, the authors have documented increases in advertising awareness and in brand perceptions to Web banner ads for apparel as well as technology goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
This paper aims at developing profiles of consumers who have already conducted shopping through the Internet and of those who are interested to adopt Internet shopping as an innovation. Based on the theories and processes of consumer adoption decision and diffusion of innovations, the study measures demographic and behavioural characteristics, as well as perceptions and preferences of Greek consumers towards distance shopping in general and Internet retailing in particular. The survey conducted offers insightful preliminary empirical data based on which detailed profiles of Internet shoppers (“innovators”) and interested-to-adopt Internet shopping (“early adopters”) are developed. The empirical research findings of this study provide relevant managerial implications while setting the foundation for future research directions in this area.
The 5th edition of E-Marketing treats the subject as traditional marketing with a twist: the Internet and other technologies have had a profound effect on the way we do business. This transformation has resulted in new business techniques that add customer value, build customer relationships, and increase company profitability. Stressing product, pricing, distribution, and promotion, the authors use a strategic perspective and give many important practices not covered in previous editions: namely, blogs, social networking, online branding, and search marketing. Point-of-purchase scanning devices, databases, and other offline technologies are discussed. For anyone interested in learning more about electronic marketing, this is an excellent handbook; its comprehensive glossary makes this a must-have reference.
The direct marketing database of customers and prospects has from its inception been recognized as critical to the success of tactical activities such as promotional and customer service programs. This article argues that there are numerous other programmatic decisions that can be improved by analysis of the database. Further, it argues that the most effective use of a database extends beyond tactical exercises to strategic marketing decisions. A hierarchy is presented that can guide managers toward more powerful and more integrative uses of the database resource in planning and executing databased marketing activities at both the tactical and strategic levels.
This article considers the role of Customer Decision Support System (CDSS) in web-based marketing. The article looks at what parts of the customer decision process can be supported, and how a CDSS must be placed within the context of the other web and Internet facilities available to a customer. The article then consider the case of an early adopter of web technology by plastic products company GE Plastics, whose Website evolved from an electronic publishing platform into a CDSS and of a late adopter, UTC Carrier Corp. This article concludes that CDSS is one way of conceptualizing second-generation web-based marketing systems. It is a convenient framework for those developing substantial systems, particularly in the business-to-business environment. The major lessons that can be summarized as follows: first, consider the decision making the customer undertakes, and what part of the process the related company wish to support. Second, do not develop systems in isolation; consider the other web and Internet facilities a customer has access to and may use in conjunction with your site. Third, models help a customer with evaluation and can provide considerable added value, but care should be taken to ensure that customers understand the assumptions and limits of any model. Fourth, plan for a low-maintenance system based upon existing data and models, if necessary designing and including features for automatic updating
El objetivo de este libro es proporcionar herramientas conceptuales y técnicas para conocer el comportamiento del consumidor. Para ello, presenta dos corrientes independientes de investigación de mercado, el enfoque de la formación de concepto y el enfoque de proceso de información. En segundo término, concibe al consumidor y a la competencia como los dos elementos claves a los que se enfrenta el director de mercadotecnia. Por último, integra esos elementos en el diseño de la estrategia mercadotécnica, utilizando un modelo matemático para la simulación del mercado.
As the need for more efficient business practices arises in the area of business to consumer relationships, enterprises strangle to explore new channels so as to provide services that will offer the opportunity for business extension, maximisation of profit and, at the same time, consumer satisfaction. However, there is a lot of other issues that need to be examined in this context. Consumer behaviour is totally changing against virtual services while traditional processes such as shopping or product evaluation related to consumer analysis acquire a totally new content. This paper is investigating the potential of Electronic Commerce technologies and especially Internet, in transforming the traditional retailing processes through the use of Intelligent Agents, with emphasis in the Marketing aspects. A framework of desired services is defined and an architecture for establishing the necessary interface among retailers and consumers in a future retail cyberspace is proposed. 1. Introdu...
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The transformation of the promotion mix in the virtual retail environment: an initial framework and comparative study
- Pramataris K.C.
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- A P Vrechopoulos
- K C Pramataris
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