Support for the social dimension of shopping through web based sales configurators
نویسندگان
چکیده
Mass Customizers (MCs) often sell personalized products through Web Based Sales Configurators (WBSCs). Recently, a number of them have connected their WBSCs with Social Software Applications (SSAs). This is not surprising since SSAs provide an interactive and socially rich shopping experience, which makes shopping on WBSCs more similar to retail shopping experiences. Even though interaction with customers is a distinctive characteristic of MCs, research on the use of SSAs by MCs is very limited. The present paper reports the preliminary results of research that aims to (i) describe how existing WBSCs connect with SSAs, (ii) understand which stages of the configuration-shopping process are supported by the different WBSCs-SSAs connections, and (iii) explain how the different WBSCs-SSAs connections support fulfilment of the needs for social feedback and for social involvement that WBSC users perceive during their shopping experiences.
منابع مشابه
The Anatomy of a Sales Configurator: An Empirical Study of 111 Cases
Nowadays, mass customization has been embraced by a large portion of the industry. As a result, the web abounds with sales configurators that help customers tailor all kinds of goods and services to their specific needs. In many cases, configurators have become the single entry point for placing customer orders. As such, they are strategic components of companies’ information systems and must m...
متن کاملIncreasing the Intelligence of Virtual Sales Assistants through Knowledge Modeling Techniques
Shopping agents are web-based applications that help consumers to find appropriate products in the context of e-commerce. In this paper we argue about the utility of advanced model-based techniques that recently have been proposed in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering, in order to increase the level of support provided by this type of applications. We illustrate thi...
متن کاملOverview of Configurators as Effective Tools for Corporate Knowledge Management
Knowledge management is widely discussed, but scarcely supported with tools and information systems. Configurators capture knowledge from product design, marketing and sales. By that configurators support three of the core processes of knowledge management: distribution, usage and preservation of knowledge. Constraint-based configurators and other model-based reasoning systems provide the techn...
متن کاملIncreasing the consumer-perceived benefits of a mass-customization experience through sales-configurator capabilities
The consumer’s experience of self-customizing a product with a sales configurator can be a source of experience-related benefits for the consumer, above and beyond the traditionally considered utility of possessing a product that better fits his/her idiosyncratic needs. Although such experience-related benefits have been found by previous studies as increasing consumers’ willingness to pay for ...
متن کاملInvestigating the Effect of Social Business Characteristics on Trust and Willingness to Partnership
Objective Social business is a sub-category of electronic business that seeks social, innovative and cooperative approaches within online markets and also uses social media to attract social partnership and cooperation of such network users to support online purchasing and services. Trust is considered as an effective factor leading to successful social business. Because of the growing populari...
متن کامل