Enhancing web marketing by using ontology

The existence of the Web has a major impact on people\u27s life styles. Online shopping, online banking, email, instant messenger services, search engines and bulletin boards have gradually become parts of our daily life. All kinds of information can be found on the Web. Web marketing is one of the ways to make use of online information. By extracting demographic information and interest information from the Web, marketing knowledge can be augmented by applying data mining algorithms. Therefore, this knowledge which connects customers to products can be used for marketing purposes and for targeting existing and potential customers. The Web Marketing Project with Ontology Support has the purpose to find and improve marketing knowledge. In the Web Marketing Project, association rules about marketing knowledge have been derived by applying data mining algorithms to existing Web users\u27 data. An ontology was used as a knowledge backbone to enhance data mining for marketing. The Raising Method was developed by taking advantage of the ontology. Data are preprocessed by Raising before being fed into data mining algorithms. Raising improves the quality of the set of mined association rules by increasing the average support value. Also, new rules have been discovered after applying Raising. This dissertation thoroughly describes the development and analysis of the Raising method. Moreover, a new structure, called Intersection Ontology, is introduced to represent customer groups on demand. Only needed customer nodes are created. Such an ontology is used to simplify the marketing knowledge representation. Finally, some additional ontology usages are mentioned. By integrating an ontology into Web marketing, the marketing process support has been greatly improved

Database marketing intelligence methodology supported by ontologies and knowlegde discovery in databases

Tese de doutoramento em Tecnologias e Sistemas de InformaçãoActualmente as organizações actuam em ambientes caracterizados pela inconstância, elevada competitividade e pressão no desenvolvimento de novas abordagens ao mercado e aos clientes. Nesse contexto, o acesso à informação, o suporte à tomada de decisão e a partilha de conhecimento tornam-se essenciais para o desempenho organizativo. No domínio do marketing têm surgido diversas abordagens para a exploração do conteúdo das suas bases de dados. Uma das abordagens, utilizadas com maior sucesso, tem sido o processo para a descoberta de conhecimento em bases de dados. Por outro lado, a necessidade de representação e partilha de conhecimento tem contribuído para um crescente desenvolvimento das ontologias em áreas diversas como sejam medicina, aviação ou segurança. O presente trabalho cruza diversas áreas: tecnologias e sistemas de informação (em particular a descoberta de conhecimento), o marketing (especificamente o database marketing) e as ontologias. O objectivo principal desta investigação foca o papel das ontologias em termos de suporte e assistência ao processo de descoberta de conhecimento em bases de dados num contexto de database marketing. Através de abordagens distintas foram formuladas duas ontologias: ontologia para o processo de descoberta de conhecimento em bases de dados e, a ontologia para o processo database marketing suportado na extracção de conhecimento em bases de dados (com reutilização da ontologia anterior). O processo para licitação e validação de conhecimento, baseou-se no método de Delphi (ontologia de database marketing) e no processo de investigação baseada na revisão de literatura (ontologia de descoberta de conhecimento). A concretização das ontologias suportou-se em duas metodologias: metodologia methontology, para a ontologia de descoberta de conhecimento e metodologia 101 para a ontologia de database marketing. A última, evidencia a reutilização de ontologias, viabilizando assim a reutilização da ontologia de descoberta de conhecimento na ontologia de database marketing. Ambas ontologias foram desenvolvidas sobre a ferramenta Protege-OWL permitindo não só a criação de toda a hierarquia de classes, propriedades e relações, como também, a realização de métodos de inferência através de linguagens baseadas em regras de Web semântica. Posteriormente, procedeu-se à experimentação da ontologia em casos práticos de extracção de conhecimento a partir de bases de dados de marketing. O emprego das ontologias neste contexto de investigação, representa uma abordagem pioneira e inovadora, uma vez que são propostas para assistirem em cada uma das fases do processo de extracção de conhecimento em bases de dados através de métodos de inferência. È assim possível assistir o utilizador em cada fase do processo de database marketing em acções tais como de selecção de actividades de marketing em função dos objectivos de marketing (e.g., perfil de cliente), em acções de selecção dados (e.g., tipos de dados a utilizar em função da actividade a desenvolver) ou mesmo no processo de selecção de algoritmos (e.g. inferir sobre o tipo de algoritmo a usar em função do objectivo definido). A integração das duas ontologias num contexto mais lato permite, propor uma metodologia com vista ao efectivo suporte do processo de database marketing baseado no processo de descoberta de conhecimento em bases de dados, denominado nesta dissertação como: Database Marketing Intelligence. Para a demonstração da viabilidade da metodologia proposta foi seguido o método action-research com o qual se observou e testou o papel das ontologias no suporte à descoberta de conhecimento em bases de dados (através de um caso prático) num contexto de database marketing. O trabalho de aplicação prática decorreu sobre uma base de dados real relativa a um cartão de fidelização de uma companhia petrolífera a operar em Portugal. Os resultados obtidos serviram para demonstrar em duas vertente o sucesso da abordagem proposta: por um lado foi possível formalizar e acompanhar todo o processo de descoberta de conhecimento em bases de dados; por outro lado, foi possível perspectivar uma metodologia para um domínio concreto suportado por ontologias (suporte á decisão na selecção de métodos e tarefas) e na descoberta de conhecimento em bases de dados.Nowadays, the environment in which companies work is turbulent, very competitive and pressure in the development of new approaches to the market and clients. In this context, the access to information, the decision support and knowledge sharing become essential for the organization performance. In the marketing domain several approaches for the exploration of database exploration have emerged. One of the most successfully used approaches has been the knowledge discovery process in databases. On the other hand, the necessity of knowledge representation and sharing and contributed to a growing development of ontologies in several areas such as in the medical, the aviation or safety areas. This work crosses several areas: technology and information systems (specifically knowledge discovery in databases), marketing (specifically database marketing) and ontologies in general. The main goal of this investigation is to focus on the role of ontologies in terms of support and aid to the knowledge discovery process in databases in a database marketing context. Through distinct approaches two ontologies were created: ontology for the knowledge discovery process in databases, and the ontology for the database marketing process supported on the knowledge extraction in databases (reusing the former ontology). The elicitation and validation of knowledge process was based on the Delphi method (database marketing ontology) and the investigation process was based on literature review (knowledge discovery ontology). The carrying out of both ontologies was based on two methodologies: methontology methodology, for the knowledge discovery process and 101 methodology for the database marketing ontology. The former methodology, stresses the reusing of ontologies, allowing the reusing of the knowledge discovery ontology in the database marketing ontology. Both ontologies were developed with the Protege-OWL tool. This tool allows not only the creation of all the hierarchic classes, properties and relationships, but also the carrying out of inference methods through web semantics based languages. Then, the ontology was tested in practical cases of knowledge extraction from marketing databases. The application of ontologies in this investigation represents a pioneer and innovative approach, once they are proposed to aid and execute an effective support in each phase of the knowledge extraction from databases in the database marketing context process. Through inference processes on the knowledge base created it was possible to assist the user in each phase of the database marketing process such as, in marketing activity selection actions according to the marketing objectives (e.g., client profile) or in data selection actions (e.g., type of data to use according to the activity to be preformed. In relation to aid in the knowledge discovery process in databases, it was also possible to infer on the type of algorithm to use according to the defined objective or even according to the type of data pre-processing activities to develop regarding the type of data and type of attribute information. The integration of both ontologies in a more general context allows proposing a methodology aiming to the effective support of the database marketing process based on the knowledge discovery process in databases, named in this dissertation as: Database Marketing Intelligence. To demonstrate the viability of the proposed methodology the action-research method was followed with which the role of ontologies in assisting knowledge discovery in databases (through a practical case) in the database marketing context was observed and tested. For the practical application work a real database about a customer loyalty card from a Portuguese oil company was used. The results achieved demonstrated the success of the proposed approach in two ways: on one hand, it was possible to formalize and follow the whole knowledge discovery in databases process; on the other hand, it was possible to perceive a methodology for a concrete domain supported by ontologies (support of the decision in the selection of methods and tasks) and in the knowledge discovery in databases.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - SFRH/BD/36541/200

New Fundamental Technologies in Data Mining

The progress of data mining technology and large public popularity establish a need for a comprehensive text on the subject. The series of books entitled by "Data Mining" address the need by presenting in-depth description of novel mining algorithms and many useful applications. In addition to understanding each section deeply, the two books present useful hints and strategies to solving problems in the following chapters. The contributing authors have highlighted many future research directions that will foster multi-disciplinary collaborations and hence will lead to significant development in the field of data mining

An application intersection marketing ontology

We consider the design of an ontology for marketing knowledge. Such an ontology contains two hierarchies, a customer hierarchy and a product hierarchy. The product hierarchy representation is straight-forward, as in general each level consists of products that are more specific than the products on the previous level. However, the customer hierarchy is problematic, since it involves many independent dimensions such as age, gender, income, etc. A straightforward ordering of the different dimensions to create a tree hierarchy is ineffective. We present an innovative design for the customer hierarchy based on introducing intersections of options for various dimensions on demand. We call such an ontology an intersection ontology. The advantages of such a design are explored and evaluated using our Web marketing project. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006