Section 8: Selling over the
Internet and the World Wide Web
WEBSELL: Intelligent Sales Assistants
for the World Wide Web
R. Traphöner
Intelligent E-Commerce with Guiding Agents
based on Personalized Interaction Tools
U. Thiel, A. Stein
SPGC: A Personalized Server and Content
Manager
J. Santesmases, D. López, Y. Fernández
Advanced Presentation of Products as
part of e-Commerce
J. Buerstenbinder, W. Lipp, M. Wankel, A. Bleicher
FashionMe: The Future of Fashion Shopping
over the Internet
A. Miller, A. Müller
Interactive Marketing and Intelligent
3D-Configuration of Products in
Electronic Shop Systems
I. Fikouras, S. Wurst, F. Weber, K. Detken, U. Kaufmann
Web Intelligence: Analysis, Representation
& Deployment
M. Mulvenna, S.S. Anand, A. Büchner, M. Baumgarten, A. Patrick,
Z. Neuman
Personalised Services and Promotions
in Internet Retailing
K. Pramataris, A. Vrechopoulos, N. Mylonopoulos, G. Papamichail,
A. Poylymenakou
Creating Loyalty in E-Commerce Using
Agent Technology
J. Pitt, Y. Arafa, G. Dionisi, S. Martin, Mark Witkowski
An Agent-Based Model for an Electronic
MarketPlace
M.J. Viamonte, C. Ramos
Guiding the Customer's Search in E-Business
with the Intelligent Cluster
Index
O. Görlitz, R. Neubert, W. Benn
Critical Factors for e-Business Retailing
C. Persson, S. WilkstrØm
WEBSELL:
Intelligent Sales Assistants for the World Wide Web
Ralph TRAPHÖNER
tec:inno GmbH, Sauerwiesen 2, D-67661 Kaiserslautern, Germany
The ESPRIT Project No. 27.068
WEBSELL developed a toolkit to set up intelligent Sales Assistants
for the World Wide Web, i.e. a virtual sales staff for catalogues
and online shops on the Internet. We present the component architecture
and the tools developed within the project. This architecture
relies on XML for the representation of products, meta data,
and knowledge, and its exchange. The power of the approach is
illustrated by a commercial Business-to-Consumer sales applications.
The resulting sales assistants dramatically increase the utility
of a virtual shop by adding knowledge based advice that guides
the customer interactively to a product that meets his needs.
We thereby overcome the lack of interactivity that most of today's
shops turn into unpleasant self-service stores. WEBSELL shows
a technology for the transition towards e-service enabled by
Case-Based Reasoning and Knowledge Management.
Top
of Page
Intelligent
E-Commerce with Guiding Agents based on Personalized Interaction
Tools
Ulrich THIEL and Adelheit STEIN
GMD - Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik, Institut für
Integrierte Publikations- und Informationssysteme (IPSI), Dolivostr.15,
64293 Darmstadt, Germany
Project COGITO aims at an agent-based
interface for B-to-C applications that is not merely re-active
to some user request, but pro-active and capable of engaging
in a goal-directed conversation with the user, e.g., by taking
the initiative to recommend new products. The approach combines
content-based and collaborative filtering methods to generate
recommendations. In addition, the naturalness of interaction,
especially for casual users, is enhanced by appropriate 2D and
3D animations that express the agent's emotional reactions.
Top
of Page
SPGC:
A Personalized Server and Content Manager
Juan SANTESMASES, David LÓPEZ, Yolanda FERNÁNDEZ
Future Spaces
Spain
The aim of this paper is to
present a design for a Personalized Server and Web Content Manager
(SPGC) which provide an easy content management and maintenance
as well as an online personalization of content presentation.
Top
of Page
Advanced
Presentation of Products as part of e-Commerce
Juergen BUERSTENBINDER (1), Wolfram LIPP (2), Matthias WANKEL
(3) and
Andreas BLEICHER (4)
(1) Pixelpark AG Institute for Media Development, Rotherstr.
8, D-10245 Berlin, Germany,
(2) adidas-Sarragan France Sarl, Route de Saessolsheim, 67700
Landesheim, France
(3) IRS Integrated Realisation Services GmbH, Roethensteig 17,
90408 Nuernberg, Germany
(4) Virtual Identity Produktionsgesellschaft für interaktive
medien GmbH, Gerberau 5, 79098 Freiburg, Germany
Presentation of products, preferably
for all types of catalogues and all technical platforms simultaneously,
is a very necessary pre-requisite for selling products. The project
PEP-PRO, sponsored by the EU under the programme ESPRIT, started
with one very much committed user partner - adidas Sarragan France
- and technical partner to experiment with a generic approach
on multi-channel media production for product presentation and
to prepare a general product development. The technical expertise
of the partner allowed a generalisation of the user specific
point of view. This approach opened a very high exploitation
potential of the final solution for the user partner internally
and for all technical partner externally with other customers
too. The result of the project is a stable prototype which has
been given to full product development immediately after the
project.
Top
of Page
FashionMe:
The Future of Fashion Shopping over the Internet
Ann MILLER and Andrea MÜLLER
Fraunhofer IAO / University of Stuttgart, Nobelstrasse 12, D-70569
Stuttgart, Germany
In this paper we describe a 3D Virtual Fitting Room demonstrator
which is being developed within the project FashionMe IST-1999-11078
(Fashion Shopping with individualised Avatars). The results show
how current markets and retailer groups using virtual reality
technologies can offer successful commercial applications. The
demonstrator focuses on technical features, users' interests,
and vendors´ needs regarding web shopping offers. Aspects
like security and privacy are not considered in this paper, since
several nearly finished developments and standards exist already
for these topics
Top
of Page
Interactive
Marketing and Intelligent 3D-Configuration of Products in
Electronic Shop Systems
I. Fikouras(1), S.
Wurst(1), F. Weber(1), K. Detken(2), U. Kaufmann(2)
(1)BIBA, Hochschulring 20, D-28359 Bremen, Germany,
(2)WWL Internet GmbH, Goebelstr. 46, D-28865 Lilienthal/Bremen,
Germany
During the last years, marketing
of products via the Internet became more and more important for
both customers and manufacturers. Today, electronic shop systems
enable people to select products from catalogues, gather further
information and finally order and pay the articles via a WWW
browser. However, most products sold this way are fixed and cannot
be customised to satisfy the buyer's requirements. The objectives
of the European project INTELLECT are to enable the suitable
representation of such products including all practicable variants
in electronic commerce systems to achieve the most realistic
possible visualisation. New concepts of configuration using 3D
user interfaces will enable potential customers to design a product
customised to their individual needs and wishes. This paper will
present the first results of the project which has started in
the beginning of 2000. User requirements' analysis has already
been carried out by interviewing the end-users in the consortium.
Based on these results, the system concept is currently being
developed. The paper will close with a description of the envisaged
results and a description of the upcoming tasks.
Top
of Page
Web
Intelligence: Analysis, Representation & Deployment
Maurice MULVENNA(1), Sarabjot S. ANAND(1), Alex BÜCHNER(1),
Matthias BAUMGARTEN(2), Alan PATRICK(2) & Zoë NEUMAN(2)
(1)MINEit Software, 5a Edgewater Business Park, Belfast, BT3
9JQ, Northern Ireland
(2)NIKEL, University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, BT37 0QB Northern
Ireland
This paper describes the practical
application of web intelligence for visitor behavioural analysis.
The objective of the paper is to show how the research in data
mining carried out in the authors' laboratory has been synthesised
to address the requirements of web intelligence. Initially, Web
Intelligence is defined, and the data components used are explained.
The web mining components of web intelligence are then outlined.
Our research goals and our previous work are described in the
following sections, followed by the inter-linked goals for digital
marketing using web intelligence. The main body of the paper
describes the various data-mining based analytical processes
employed for web intelligence. The section on closing the marketing
circle describes how the output of web intelligence can form
a firm foundation for personalisation activities. The final section
draws conclusions on the application of web intelligence in the
near future.
Top
of Page
Personalised
Services and Promotions in Internet Retailing
Katherine PRAMATARIS, Adam VRECHOPOULOS, Nikos MYLONOPOULOS,
George PAPAMICHAIL and Angeliki POYLYMENAKOU
eLTRUN (Electronic Trading Research Unit), Athens University
of Economics and Business, 47A Evelpidon & 33 Lefkados Str.,
113 62, Athens, Greece
The exponential growth and
technological capabilities of the Internet and the World Wide
Web as a new sales channel, raise many questions about how to
market on the Net. Issues of technology usage and user interface
become critical as businesses and retailers attempt to exploit
the boom in electronic commerce and marketing. Customisation
and personalisation are extremely powerful magnets drawing customers
to electronic commerce sites, and they differentiate electronic
from traditional commerce, where such customisation is much harder
to accomplish, or even infeasible. In this paper we examine the
various aspects of personalisation we meet in online retail sites
including a web site's structure, content, recommendation features,
advertising and promotions. In addition, we look into how these
are implemented within the ACTIVE electronic retail platform,
a development of an ESPRIT-funded project. We conclude with some
general comments, putting our discussion in a broader business
perspective.
Top
of Page
Creating
Loyalty in E-Commerce Using Agent Technology
Jeremy PITT(1), Yasmine ARAFA(1), Gabriele DIONISI(1),
Simon MARTIN(2) and Mark WITKOWSKI(1)
(1)Intelligent & Interactive Systems Section, Department
of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Imperial College
of Science, Technology & Medicine, Exhibition Road, London,
SW7 2BT, UK
(2) Advanced IP Services & Management, Nortel Networks, Harlow,
Essex CM17 9NA, UK
The EU MAPPA Project (EP28831) seeks to create loyalty: in electronic
commerce by using Agent technology. To create loyalty, it is
necessary to understand the potential value of a customer's I2P2R2,
that is the value of information, interaction, personalization,
privacy, (mutual) respect and re-use. In this paper, we analyse
the situation in conventional retailing, give guidelines on transferring
the value to electronic commerce, and then discuss how the value
is realised in the MAPPA system architecture and/or its agents.
Our key finding is that personalization provided by intelligent
agents adds value and, over time, should increase loyalty. In
this way, a retail organization can leverage the existing loyalty
of its current customer base and transfer it to the electronic
domain, and by using personal agents increase that loyalty and
so maintain market share.
Top
of Page
An
Agent-Based Model for an Electronic MarketPlace
Maria João VIAMONTE and Carlos RAMOS
Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto,Rua São Tomé,4200
Porto, Portugal
Electronic Commerce (EC) is
one of the areas in which the technology of intelligent agents
can be successfully applied, and maybe, the only way to allow
consumers to deal with the complexity and diversity of the electronic
services offered and in particular in environments like the Internet.
While there are many Web services, which help users find things
to buy, there are few that help buyers and sellers. The purpose
of this paper is to present a model for a virtual electronic
Market Place more flexible than the existing on the Web, where
users create autonomous agents to buy and sell goods/services
on their behalf. Four stages of the Consumer Buying Behaviour
(CBB) model are addressed.
Top
of Page
Guiding
the Customer's Search in E-Business with the Intelligent Cluster
Index
Otmar GÖRLITZ,
Ralf NEUBERT, Wolfgang BENN
Chemnitz University of Technology, Department of Computer Science,
09107 Chemnitz, Germany
The set up process of an online
shop with comfortable search and navigation features involves
a lot of high cost manual labour by its creator. But the easy
to use front end will become one of the critical success factors
in e-commerce. We have developed an indexing mechanism based
on AI and knowledge technologies, which automatically organises
an arbitrarily large inventory set into categories of belonging
goods. The categories are hierarchically ordered and form a specialisation
tree over the inventory. Therefore, comfortable navigation and
fast retrieval are inherently supported in our system. An included
query module allows the selection of commodity categories by
providing desired features of the goods. The result set is by
default restricted to the manageable number of matching categories.
Additionally, by making use of its similarity searching features,
the query module can support cross-selling activities by including
content-related commodities into the result set within an adjustable
tolerance range. Furthermore the mechanism provides the development
base for easy to use shop front ends and tools supporting their
efficient creation.
Top
of Page
Critical
Factors for e-Business Retailing
Christian PERSSON(1)and Solveig WIKSTRÖM(2)
(1) Media Technology and Graphic Arts, Royal Institute of Technology,
SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM, Sweden
(2) School of Business, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 STOCKHOLM,
Sweden
The number of players marketing
consumer goods and services on the Internet is steadily increasing.
The original (physical) retailers experience fierce competition
from other suppliers who market directly to the consumers. How
should physical retailers meet this competition? In this paper
we show there are many areas which can complement each other
between the physical retail store and the e-store. We concentrate
our analyses on three basic retailing activities: building the
assortment, providing information about the products offered
and finally, providing access to the products as part of the
final transaction. We ascertain that it makes sense for traditional
retailers to establish electronic retailing as part of their
current business to meet the competition. The results are based
on an strengths and weaknesses analysis of how the basic retail
functions change when performed electronically. This evaluation
is made from a consumer perspective, based on extensive empirical
data. The paper ends with suggestions on how retailers can improve
their e-retailing service to the consumers.
Top
of Page |