Personalization of E-Commerce Applications in SMEs: Conclusions from an Empirical Study in Switzerland

Personalization of e-commerce applications is an issue that is gaining increasing importance with the advancing maturity of such systems. There is already e-commerce software on the market offering integrated e-shop and personalization functions. However, the available software is too timeconsuming and expensive for SMEs. With this in mind we saw a need to investigate the potential for personalization from the particular angle of SMEs. In addition to some theoretical fundamentals of personalization, this paper presents the results of an empirical study. With the help of a survey, we investigated the application potential for personalization tools IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the book, Advanced Topics in Electronic Commerce, vol. 1 edited by Mehdi Khosrow-Pour © 2005, Idea Group Inc. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB11315