Classification of Personalization Functions for E-Commerce Applications

Personalization is an interdisciplinary topic that has been discussed in the literature of marketing and information systems as well as in other research areas. In this paper we present findings from a longitudinal research project on personalization of e-commerce systems. The findings were taken from interviews and software development projects with company partners (action research). In a first step personalization functions are classified according to their order of appearance along the buying process. In a second step they are grouped into subcategories. There is no single strategy for selecting successful personalization functions as the suitability varies depending on parameters like industry, number of customers or product range. The main contribution described in this paper is a classification framework for existing and emerging personalization functions for eecommerce applications. This framework provides an extensive overview on personalization functions that can be used to individualize and improve human-computer-interaction both in B2C and B2B e-commerce environments.