Recommendation agent impact on consumer online shopping: The Movie Magic case study

A simulated online shopping environment with a recommender system based on collaborative filtering data has been developed to empirically test the impact of recommendation agents in an online retail environment. The report provides some background for the most widely used types of recommender system based on collaborative filtering. The Movie Magic system developed for this study is described, as well as the experiment assessing the impact of such an agent on product promotion effectiveness, customer satisfaction with the website, and customer loyalty to the website. Finally, the report discusses the implications of the results for system developers and managers interested in using Intelligent Agent technology for enhancing e-commerce. By corroborating the proposed relationships between the use of the recommender agent and improved product promotion, customer satisfaction and loyalty, the results should aid online businesses in further understanding the benefits and limitations of using a recommender agent to support e-commerce.     

An agent‐based approach for managing e‐commerce activities

In this article, we propose an agent‐based approach for managing e‐commerce activities. In our approach, an agent is present in each e‐commerce site, managing the information stored there. In addition, another agent is associated with each customer, handling his/her profile. The proposed approach is based on the use of a particular conceptual model called the Behaviour‐Semantic Distance and Relevance (B‐SDR) network, which is capable of uniformly representing and handling information stored in e‐commerce sites and customer profiles. The capabilities of the B‐SDR network model are exploited to let customer and site agents cooperate in such a way in order to support a customer in identifying, whenever he/she accesses an e‐commerce site, those products and services present in the site itself and for better matching his/her interests. The approach has been implemented in a prototype in which its functionalities are discussed here also. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Understanding Customer Trust in Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, Web-Mediated Electronic Commerce, and Traditional Commerce

Customer trust is important in agent-mediated electronic commerce, web-mediated electronic commerce, and traditional commerce. However, the meaning of customer trust in these contexts has not been clearly defined or fully delineated. This paper proposes a new trust model that differentiates between cognitive trust and emotional trust, defines customer trust in each type of commerce as cognitive trust and emotional trust in the various entities (e.g., website, computer agent) that make up a commerce context, and then compares customer trust across the three types of commerce. We propose that, first, emotional trust merits research, particularly in e-commerce. Second, both awareness of the known and awareness of the unknown will be higher in e-commerce than in traditional commerce; this will lead to lower cognitive trust and emotional trust in e-commerce. Third, the key to increase customer trust in e-commerce is to design and develop technologies to reduce the distance between a customer and each entity, thereby increasing awareness of the known and decreasing awareness of the unknown. Fourth, cognitive trust and emotional trust fall along a continuum with potentially asymmetric effects on customer dependence on entities in e-commerce (e.g., computer agent adoption). Finally, future research on customer trust in e-commerce is outlined.     

改进型模糊神经网络在顾客分类中的应用研究

随着电子商务的不断发展,顾客信息的管理和分析对B2C电子商务网站来说越来越重要,因此需要一个行之有效的方法来收集顾客信息,并深入挖掘其中所蕴涵的有价值信息。在本文中,我们提出了一种可以根据消费者的网页访问记录和网上交易记录来动态地对顾客进行分类的方法,主要是利用了改进型的FuzzyART神经网络对顾客在网站上的行为模型进行分类,从而得到顾客的分类信息。其结果可以作为提供个性化服务、确定产品的市场定位等方面的基础和依据。文章通过实验证明了上述方法的有效性和正确性,并对其应用进行了进一步的展望。     

Secure web transaction with anonymous mobile agent over internet

A major problem of mobile agents is their apparent mability to authenticate transactions in hostile environments,In this paper,a new secure anonymous mobile agent scheme is proposed for the prevention of agent tempering without compromising the mobility or autonomy of the agent.in the scheme,a mobile agent can produce valid signature on website‘s bid(it means to transact a contact with the web site)on behalf of its customer ,without-revealing the customer‘s real private key.In addition,the anonymity of the customer is also achieved when its agent tansacts with the websites.Furthermore,the customer who issues a malicious agent or denies the transaction can be identified and detected by Agent Management Center(AMC).Thererfore,the scheme is practical in the future elecronic commerce over Internet.     

Consumer perception of interface quality, security, and loyalty in electronic commerce

Customer interface quality, perceived security, and customer loyalty are critical factors for success of an e-commerce website; however, the relationships among them are not fully understood. We proposed a model for testing the relationships among them and the important outcomes of the site: switching costs and customer loyalty. Data was collected to test the model using a web-based survey, and empirical analyses were performed using SEM. The analytical results demonstrated that customer interface quality and perceived security positively affected customer satisfaction and switching costs, and thus customer loyalty to an e-commerce website. Specifically, our study showed that switching costs positively moderated the effect of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty; this moderating effect is discussed.     

XML queries and algebra in the Enosys integration platform

We describe the Enosys XML integration platform, focusing on the query language, algebra, and architecture of its query processor. The platform enables the development of eBusiness applications in customer relationship management, e-commerce, supply chain management, and decision support. These applications often require that data be integrated dynamically from multiple information sources. The Enosys platform allows one to build (virtual and/or materialized) integrated XML views of multiple sources, using XML queries as view definitions. During run-time, the application issues XML queries against the views. Queries and views are translated into the XCQL algebra and are combined into a single algebra expression/plan. Query plan composition and query plan decomposition challenges are faced in this process. Finally, the query processor lazily evaluates the result, using an appropriate adaptation of relational database iterator models to XML. The paper describes the platform architecture and components, the supported XML query language and the query processor architecture. It focuses on the underlying XML query algebra, which differs from the algebras that have been considered by W3C in that it is particularly tuned to semistructured data and to optimization and efficient evaluation in a system that follows the conventional architecture of database systems.     

An efficient algorithm of frequent XML query pattern mining for ebXML applications in e-commerce

Providing efficient query to XML data for ebXML applications in e-commerce is crucial, as XML has become the most important technique to exchange data over the Internet. ebXML is a set of specifications for companies to exchange their data in e-commerce. Following the ebXML specifications, companies have a standard method to exchange business messages, communicate data, and business rules in e-commerce. Due to its tree-structure paradigm, XML is superior for its capability of storing and querying complex data for ebXML applications. Therefore, discovering frequent XML query patterns has become an interesting topic for XML data management in ebXML applications. In this paper, we present an efficient mining algorithm, namely ebXMiner, to discover the frequent XML query patterns for ebXML applications. Unlike the existing algorithms, we propose a new idea by collecting the equivalent XML queries and then enumerating the candidates from infrequent XML queries in our ebXMiner. Furthermore, our simulation results show that ebXMiner outperforms other algorithms in its execution time.     

Assessing Web-enabled call center technologies

E-commerce's explosive growth has seen corporate Web sites mature from electronic versions of glossy brochures to full-service storefronts. To support this new environment, companies are providing real-time customer service to their Web customers. Despite this tremendous e-commerce growth, many people remain reluctant to complete a Web transaction without first talking to a live agent. Corporations are linking their Web sites to call centers where pools of trained agents can assist Web shoppers that need help in real time. To provide Web visitors with instant customer service, retailers are adding a talk-to-agent button on Web pages. When a visitor presses the button, the Web site will present the caller with several options for actuary talking to an agent. These options include e-mail, text chat, agent callback, and Internet telephony. There are two main technology alternatives that a call center can implement for Web integration. The first technology enables a traditional call center that has circuit-switched-based systems to support talk-to-agent alternatives. The second technology is the implementation of an all-IP call center infrastructure. Mitretek's Call Center Lab has assessed several products     

An ontology-based data integration approach for web analytics in e-commerce

Web analytics has emerged as one of the most important activities in e-commerce, since it allows companies and e-merchants to track the behavior of customers when visiting their web sites. There exist a series of tools for web analytics that are used not only for tracking and measuring web traffic, but also for analyzing the commercial activity. However, most of these tools focus on low level web attributes and metrics, making other sophisticated functionalities and analyses only available for commercial (non-free) versions.In this context, the SME-Ecompass European initiative aims at providing e-commerce SMEs with accessible tools for high level web analytics. These software facilities should use different sources of data coming from digital footprints allocated in e-shops, to fuse them together in a coherent way, and to make them available for advanced data mining procedures. This motivated us to propose in this work an ontology-based approach to collect, integrate and store web analytics data, from many sources of popular and commercial digital footprints. As article’s main impact, we obtain enriched and semantically annotated data that is used to properly train an intelligent system, involving data mining procedures, for the analysis of customer behavior in real e-commerce sites. In concrete, for the validation of our semantic approach, we have captured and integrated data from Google Analytics and Piwik digital footprints allocated in 15 e-shops of different commercial sectors and countries (UK, Spain, Greece and Germany), throughout several months of activity. The obtained results show different perspectives in customer’s behavior analysis that go one step beyond the most popular web analytics tools in the current market.     

基于XML的大宗农产品中远期交易规范研究

为解决不同的大宗农产品中远期交易平台缺乏统一的数据规范、系统共享性与重用性弱的问题,探讨了面向中远期现货交易模式的大宗农产品电子商务数据规范问题,分析了电子交易平台的业务流程,研究了大宗农产品电子商务数据规范方案,并进行了基于XML数据交换技术的实例应用。应用结果表明,基于XML的数据规范适用于电子交易平台的数据共享、传输,使大宗农产品电子交易的数据交换更加便捷。     

Dynamic explicitly specified behaviors in distributed agent-based industrial solutions

Currently, the manufacturing domain is primarily characterized by the flexibility, adaptability and robustness of the production system. The manufacturing flow processes lead to shorter cycle times to efficiently meet customer needs. Mentioned features can be more easily achieved in a distributed system, such as holonic or multi-agent system, which becomes strongly influenced by the advancement of semantic technologies. In the majority of existing multi-agent based control systems, which are responsible for acting, sensing, computing and production planning, the ontology (necessary for knowledge bases and communication) is usually hard-coded directly in the agent code. In this case, the hard-coded system behavior can be hardly maintained??usually system reprogramming is needed from time to time to satisfy customer requirements. In this paper we discuss the necessity of explicit definition of both declarative and procedural knowledge and propose explicit procedural knowledge handling. Sharing and distribution of such knowledge is discussed and illustrated on an implemented transportation system example. We also introduce the utilization of discussed architecture for explicit specification of agent behavior in failures patterns handling and smart grid configuration scenario. Such a solution greatly increases the possibility of system integration, openness, flexibility, and extensibility, all without having to restart the running distributed system. The topic discussed in this paper shows the ability of the dynamic reconfigurable multi-agent system to participate in development of industrial control systems and solutions.     

基于XML的语义知识表达和智能搜索

传统电子商务平台的控制集中性、系统非动态性和非智能性等缺陷越来越成为其发展的瓶颈.基于智能代理与Web服务技术的新一代电子商务平台克服了这些不足.在平台中,智能代理作为商务的主体,在商务活动中需要拥有必要的知识,并需与顾客进行智能化的知识交互.基于该问题,提出基于XML的语义知识表达和智能搜索.该知识表达和搜索基于XML技术和语义关系而建立.分析表明,它们可以有效提高电子商务平台的智能性.     

一种人工情绪模型及其电商计算实验应用

针对电子商务顾客购物人工系统的计算实验研究，提出一种基于状态类比假说的人工情绪模型，给出了情绪的产生、增强、衰落和消失过程的描述方法，研究了外部刺激、情感强度和内部驱动力的计算方法，并进行了模拟分析。基于此人工情绪模型，构建了电商顾客购物的情绪-行为影响关系模型；将其应用于电商顾客购物的计算实验分析。结果表明，该人工情绪模型能较好地应用于电商复杂人工系统顾客购物的计算实验。     

Integrating E-Business XML Business Forms and Rule-Based Agent Technologies

This study investigates the role of extensible mark-up language (XML) business forms and agent-based computing to support negotiation, management and implementation of inter-organization business processes. We explore recently proposed standards for representing artificial agent exchanges through rule-based inference. An XML representational syntax for standard business forms is developed and applied to augment rule-based agents. A prototype investigates ways to combine knowledge-based agents and business forms to assist business and customers in Web-based conference registration. The implementation helps guide customer decisions and the combination of business forms and rules promotes understandability, testability and adaptability of the registration system.     

An integrated online pick-to-sort order batching approach for managing frequent arrivals of B2B e-commerce orders under both fixed and variable time-window batching

The emergence of e-commerce marketplace, especially the business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce sector, has created a vast market opportunity for retailers and logistics service providers (LSPs). However, facing the structural changes in B2B logistics orders, without any transformation of logistics operating process in distribution centres, LSPs are experiencing serious challenges in handling B2B e-commerce orders. In order for LSPs to grasp the market pie of the logistics and distribution sector of the e-commerce business through improving the core capability of handling B2B e-commerce order in their distribution centres, this paper proposes a novel approach for LSPs to systematically execute B2B order pre-processing so that the B2B e-commerce orders are better managed. An intelligent B2B order handling system (IOHS) is developed for efficient management of discrete, frequently arrived B2B e-commerce orders. By applying the “warehouse postponement” concept through the development of IOHS integrating cloud database management, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithm approach, B2B order grouping solutions are effectively generated. A case study is conducted in a Hong Kong-based logistics service provider who handles outsourced B2B e-commerce orders, indicating the feasibility of the proposed solution to facilitate e-order fulfilment under both fixed and variable time-window batching settings in distribution centres. A significant improvement in terms of the throughput rate of handling B2B e-commerce order in the distribution centre is found, thereby increasing the satisfaction of buyers and sellers throughout the order handling and delivery process, as well as facilitating LSPs’ capability to manage a larger number of orders received from B2B e-commerce platform, given the greater product exposure of sellers in today’s B2B e-business.     

基于商务网站CRM的Web挖掘工具架构技术探讨

CRM是一种关系营销,注重保留客户,建立长期稳定的关系。通过本文所架构的基于CRM的Web挖掘工具可挖掘出商务网站客户关系管理方面的许多有用信息,如潜在客户群体信息、重要页面信息、用户的兴趣爱好信息等,从而为电子商务网站在客户获取、客户保持等方面策略的制定提供了一定的依据,促进商务网站健康、有序的发展。     

基于电子商务的身份认证攻击研究

目前，支持网上交易、政府服务、客户服务的电子商务系统已无处不在，而任何电子商务系统的实现都要考虑其安全问题。身份认证可以说是Web应用程序中最值得关注的方面，它是电子商务安全的第一防护层。如果能够充分认识和了解针对身份认证的各种攻击形式，就可以在系统开发阶段对某些攻击进行有效和合理的屏蔽，在很大程度上增强电子商务的安全性。     

Development of a recommender system based on navigational and behavioral patterns of customers in e-commerce sites

In this article, a novel CF (collaborative filtering)-based recommender system is developed for e-commerce sites. Unlike the conventional approach in which only binary purchase data are used, the proposed approach analyzes the data captured from the navigational and behavioral patterns of customers, estimates the preference levels of a customer for the products which are clicked but not purchased, and CF is conducted using the preference levels for making recommendations. This also compares with the existing works on clickstream data analysis in which the navigational and behavioral patterns of customers are analyzed for simple relationships with the target variable. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is assessed using an experimental e-commerce site. It is found among other things that the proposed approach outperforms the conventional approach in almost all cases considered. The proposed approach is versatile and can be applied to a variety of e-commerce sites as long as the navigational and behavioral patterns of customers can be captured.