Personalization in Ecommerce Applications

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Personalization in E-commerce Applications

• Presented by Ingrid Liao

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Topics

• E-commerce (EC)
• Adaptation
• Frameworks for EC website development
• Trends in e-commerce applications
• Reminder

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E-commerce (EC)
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E-commerce (EC) Introduction

• Definition the conducting of business
  communication and transactions over networks and
  through computers
• Buying and selling of goods and services
• All aspects of business interaction, two levels
• Business to Business e-commerce (B2B)
• Business to Consumer e-commerce (B2C)
• ( Source Glossary of IT Internet Terms)

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E-commerce (EC) Advantages

• Geographical and time zone distance are no longer
  important
• Presentation of products and services in a
  web-based catalog is an effective way to publish
  information at low costs

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E-commerce (EC) Problems Solutions

• Lack of face to face dialog
• Good EC product candidates software, music,
  book, high-tech products
• Good EC service candidates information, booking,
  shipping services
• Problematic candidates dress, insurance
• One size fits all catalog

• Personalization
• Allowing individuals to customize website
  appearance and functionality

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Adaptation
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Adaptable versus Adaptive

• Adaptable
• Adaptation decided by user
• Lower-level feature

• Adaptive
• Adaptation performed by system in an automated way

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Factors for Adaptivity

• User
• Device
• Context of use

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User Characteristics

• User characteristics
• Knowledge skills
• Interests preferences
• Needs about disability
• Goals

• B2C e-commerce
• Complex products/services
• Category or properties
• Accessible services
• Application domain

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Type of Devices

• Environment data
• PC, laptop, mobile phone, PDA, on-board device,
• Different characters
• Screen size
• Computation and memory capabilities
• I/O mechanism
• Connection speed, bandwidth

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Context of Use

• Broad
• Physical context
• User location (most popular context feature)
• Environment conditions
• Social Context
• Social community or group
• Task being performed

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What is Adapted?

• Suggestion of product/service (content
  recommendation)
• Recommender
• Tailored to user/device/context characteristics
• Configuration guide
• Presentation of product/service
• Media, presentation styles
• User interface (structure)
• Layout e.g. information navigation structure

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More HCI, Less Adaptation

• Accessibility
• 3D, virtual reality UI
• Usability
• Guidelines e.g. Serco

• Users w/ special needs
• Emotional buying style
• Being usable is the 1st step for being successful

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Frameworks for EC website development
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Merchant Systems

• Facilitate creation and management of electronic
  catalogs
• Support transactional, secure services and
  integration with legacy software
• Only basic personalization features, e.g. product
  recommendation
• Personalization strategies, e.g. BroadVision
• Push recommend information and access
• Pull handle user request in a personalized way
• Quantifier matching

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Personalized Product Recommendation

• Enhance recommendation capabilities
• Interactive user search according to own
  selection criteria, e.g. dynamic taxonomies
• Inference based on user behavior
• Recommendation techniques
• Collaborative filtering analyzing similarities
  in different peoples purchase history, e.g.
  Amazon
• Content-based filtering analyzing product
  properties similar to individuals past purchase
• Taking indirect users into account

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Collaborative versus Content-based filtering

• Collaborative
• Pros
• Items as elementary entities
• Cons
• Bootstrapping problems minimum number of
  ranking
• Sparse user-rank matrix

• Content-based
• Pros
• Successfully recommend new items
• Cons
• Information must be available
• User behavior monitor
• Similar items

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How to Enhance Customers Trust in Recommender

• Transparency and explanation
• Right amount of information
• Negotiation between customer and system
• Explanation of recommendation

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Customer Information Sharing

• Increase knowledge about common customers
• Points for attention
• Respect customers privacy preferences
• Mutual trust between service providers
• Misuse
• Competitors

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Personalized Product Info Presentation

• Individual customers interests preferences
• Dynamically generated product descriptions in
  electronic catalogs
• How?
• Individual user model
• Different levels of detail
• Information on demand
• Customized compare table
• Example SeTA system

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Personalized Product Presentation Example
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Personalized Product Presentation Example
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Personalized Product Presentation Example

• Customized compare table
• Enable user to check product similarities and
  differences important to him/her
• Unobtrusively identify user priorities

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

• One-to-one interaction
• Ultimate goal profit increase
• Individual and personalized interaction
• Customer satisfaction
• Long-term relationship with customers
• Increase customer loyalty
• Accurate user model
• Supplement the lack of direct and personal
  contact with a human being

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Mass Customization

• Production of product/services tailored to
  specific customer needs, maintaining mass
  production efficiency and costs
• Past off-the-shelf goods
• Good
• Enhance relationship between customer vendor
• Limitation
• Costly and require expertise knowledge in
  configuration from scratch

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Mass Customization Example Footwear

• http//www.adidas.com/products/miadidas04/content/
  uk/container.asp

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Trends in e-commerce applications
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Ubiquitous Computing

• Possibility of accessing a serve anytime,
  anywhere and exploiting different types of
  (mobile) devices
• Adaptation in particular to context of use and
  device specific requirements
• Context-aware Applications
• Example mobile guides
• Ability to integrate different adaptation
  strategies

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M-commerce

• Commercial transactions performed by exploiting
  wireless devices
• Support e-commerce transactions by providing
  information access and promotion
• Information about users local context
• Timely, relevant, focused services
• Physical context
• Type of activity

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M-commerce Services and Applications
(Source Grami and Schell)
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Low Acceptance of Mobile Devices

• Technical limitation of mobile devices
• High cost yet poor quality services
• Lack of standards and protocols
• Individuals attitudes
• Users goal

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Design Elements of M-commerce Interface
(Source Lee and Benbasat)
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M-commerce Adaptation

• Adapting product/service presentation to screen
  size
• Adapting layout of user interface to
  characteristics of device

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Reminder
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Personalization

• Not a goal, but
• Add values to
• CRM by supporting long-term relationship
• Quality of the offer if tailored to customer
  needs
• Usability if make navigation easier
• Back-office integration