A FAB Approach to E-Commerce Knowledge Accessibility Requirements

E-commerce sites currently provide poor access to information and knowledge. Accessibility is a key issue, both for selling individual products and services, and for selling the concept of e-commerce ahead of other modes of commerce. This report uses the concept of Features, Advantages and Benefits (FAB) to define knowledge-level accessibility requirements (KAR). The KAR criteria are applied in a survey of the largest 15 e-commerce sites to show that access to knowledge for on-line purchases is impaired by the lack of product benefit information. This conclusion is supported by other survey information indicating that experienced shoppers spend less time searching for information, are more successful in identifying relevant products, and make and pay for more purchases via the web. The paper discusses how the top 15 sites can succeed without knowledge of product benefits and whether other markets will be able to implement e-commerce using existing web business models, interfaces and technologies.