Online Consumer Decision Support Multimedia-based Interactive Advising Technology For

93 Multimedia technologies (such as Flash and QuickTime) have been widely used in online product presentation and promotion to portray products in a dynamic way. The continuous visual stimuli and associated sound effects provide vivid and interesting product presentations; hence, they engage online customers in examining products. Meanwhile, recent research has indicated that online shoppers want detailed and relevant product information and explanations [2]. A promising approach is to embed rich product information and explanations into multimedia-enhanced product demonstrations. This approach is called Multimedia-based Product Annotation (MPA), a product presentation in which customers can retrieve embedded product information in a multimedia context. M PA is already used in some commercial Web sites, such as www.kodak.com, where MPA is used to present digital cameras. On this site, a customer can manipulate multimedia context to visually examine a digital camera from different views: front, back, bottom, and menu. Figure 1 shows the front view of the Kodak DX3900 camera. Some parts that need special annotation are highlighted in a distinct color. When a customer moves a mouse over one of these parts (for example, the lens in Figure 1), an annotation will emerge on the right side of the camera describing optical zoom and digital zoom. When the mouse is moved away from the part, the embedded annotation disappears. MPA provides explanations corresponding to the features or functions associated with certain parts of a product while consumers look at an illustration of the product. However, MPA has two limitations. First, customers may not be able to use the information in their product evaluation because they lack relevant expertise and knowledge. For example, if customers are not satisfied with the optical zoom of the DX3900, they might not know what other products better suit their needs. This is unlike traditional shopping environments, where customers can consult sales representatives for further assistance. Second, MPA is of little help if customers have to examine many different products in order to decide what to buy. Usually on the Internet, numerous product types and brands are available; therefore it would be difficult, if not impossible, for customers to use MPA to evaluate all products individually. To overcome these problems, we propose a new method to incorporate intelligent agent and advising technology into MPA design, and thereby to aid consumers' online decision making and product evaluations. This is referred to as Multimedia-based Interactive Advising (MIA) technology. Maes et …