Customer evaluation of personal customer profiles
Last modified: 2009-08-26
Abstract
The Internet and its related technologies have significantly changed the way businesses operate. As a direct result of these technologies, on-line businesses now have access to customers on a global scale. The nature of the Internet prevents direct personal contact with a customer as an individual. In order to provide a customer with products and services that best suit the needs of each individual customer, the on-line company needs to know its customers individually. Customer profiling is a method used by on-line companies to collect information about customers and to get to know the individual customer’s needs and preferences. Obtaining information regarding the needs and preferences of each individual customer is a major challenge facing on-line businesses. Questionnaires and various web-based technologies are used to collate this information. Once this information is obtained, initial customer profiles are created. The purpose of the customer profile is then to enable the on-line business to provide each individual customer with personalised products and services. The current research project investigated methods to create and maintain customer profiles. An e-commerce web-site was developed to cater for the creation and maintenance of customer profiles. The customer profiles were used to provide personalised product information. Customers evaluated their personal customer profiles created by the e-commerce system. The results indicated that Internet customers do prefer personalised product information based on an individual customer profile and customers appreciate to be familiar with their own customer profile.
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