Unified Modeling Language extensions for modeling user-oriented, multi-channel access CRM systems

In the advances of Internet technologies in recent years, Electronic Commerce CRM systems have gained much attention as a major theme for companies to maintain their competitiveness. The research shows that the effective customer relationship management is the major source for customer retention and gaining over new ones. On the other hand, modern technology allows to receive information through different channels (Internet, phone, WAP). Therefore analysts are forced to use faster, more reliable methods for system modeling. The author proposes a new method for modeling Customer Relationship Management systems. The UML new extensions are introduced. The customer-oriented and multichannel access patterns aim at improvement of system modeling with the high level of abstraction. This paper identifies and analyses the main advantages of language additions and compare them to object-oriented modeling with the pure UML patterns

Online Bargaining as a Form of Dynamic Pricing and the Sellers\u27 Advantage from Information Assymmetry

Among the means of implementing dynamic pricing strategies in e-commerce, online bargaining is found to be better than revenue management and online auction, because each deal actually reaches a “win-win” situation for both the buyer and the seller in the sense that the mutually agreed deal price is higher than the seller’s reserved price but lower than the buyer’s reserved price. Such feature brings profit to the seller, as well as savings to the buyer. Meanwhile when bargaining online, there is an information asymmetry between the seller side, i.e. the company side, and the buyer side, which grants a great advantage to the sellers over the buyers. This information asymmetry can be captured and exploited for financial gains through adopting a properly designed online bargaining algorithm

A CLOUD DEPLOYMENT APPROACH FOR CONSUMER SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Customer relationships have been commonly recognized as a critical factor for enterprises to succeed their business. Effective customer relationships could help enterprises deliver services to customers based on their needs, preferences, or past transactions. This model however emphasizes on the use of customer information for benefiting enterprises; customers in contrast receive less information from enterprises. To address this issue, the paradigm Consumer Support Systems (CSS) is proposed to support the provision of service information for customers to help on their decision making. In addition, since Cloud Computing has been popularity for its rich set of features and their practical applications on business can be expected, it is thus an envisioned trend for CSS to be deployed on clouds to enhance further its effectiveness on customer relationships. For this need, we present in this paper a cloud deployment approach for such a cloud-based CSS. The approach starts from the consideration of CSS and cloud characteristics, through the recognition of the architectural components in CSS and clouds, and finally ends with the deployment of the architectural components in CSS on clouds. The approach is illustrated by a cloud-based CSS for travel arrangement where decision support for travels is provided for satisfying the arrangement needs from travelers

Assessing online e-marketing and disposal in Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited (India)

Marketing function per se is undergoing a shift in managing transaction in a transparent emarketing way (Kauffman et al, 2004) especially in Indian Public Sector Undertakings (PSU) – see Reynolds et al (2007). The effectiveness of e-marketing and disposal system of scrap and purchases in PSUs, namely NLC Ltd and ICF, have been studied. Factors such as e-auction offers, time of auction, experience, security deposit (EMD), basic rate per unit, allotment of bid, acceptance of bid; payment and delivery of successful bids on select items in two PSUs over a period of three to five years have been dealt with. The study adds strength to the concept of e-marketing as well as to the theory of marketing

An object-oriented analysis method for customer relationship management information systems

Abstract For the advances of Internet technologies in recent years, Electronic Commerce (EC) has gained many attentions as a major theme for enterprises to keep their competitiveness. Amongst all possibly desired endeavors for the EC, research has shown that effective management of customer relationships is a major source for keeping competitive differentiation. Therefore, it is commonly recognized as an important goal for an enterprise to promote its management of customer relationships through a prospect information system on the Internet to achieve the so-called Business-to-Customer EC. In this paper, we propose an object-oriented analysis method for the development of such a Customer Relationship Management Information System (CRMIS). The approach starts from the identification of prospect customers and their desired behaviors under preferable execution environments, and ends with the specification of system-internal objects/entities that collaborate to satisfy these behaviors and environments. The method is a use case driven approach with UML utilized and extended as its tool. To illustrate, the method is applied to an exemplified CRMIS for house agency

The impact of e-service quality on atitude toward online shopping

The research was designed to fill the gap in the existing body of knowledge regarding attitudes toward online shopping and differences in electronic service quality perception between two different geographical and cultural countries. In addition, this research extended previous effort done in an online shopping context by providing evidence that high service quality increase consumers’ trust perception, which in turn results in favorable attitude toward online shopping, with risk perception moderating the impact on consumer’s trust. Cluster random sampling was used to select respondents with previous online shopping experience. Correlation and hierarchical regression was used to analyze the direct and indirect relationship between service quality, risk, trust and attitude, while t-test was used to compare the two cultures in e-service quality perception. The present study demonstrates that e-service quality is affected by consumer’s culture. This research also provides evidence that trust in Internet shopping is built on high service quality. Notably, risk moderates the effect of e-service quality on trust toward online retailer. Finally, the research highlights the significant effect of trust on the attitude towards online shopping

Conceptualisation and development of the admin-avatar taxonomy : antecedents, attitudinal and behavioural consequences

Academics and practitioners have increasingly acknowledged the significance of the consumer–brand relationship in both traditional and online contexts. However, the impersonal nature of the online environment is considered to be a hindrance in the development of the brand–consumer relationship. The literature suggests that strong relationship outcomes depend on successful relationship marketing tactics. Admin-avatar concept is a new concept -firstly emerged in this research- which can be used as a technological and marketing tactic. Admin-avatar can embody consumer-facing employees and mimic their real-life roles on companies’ websites, thereby playing a key role in enhancing the relationships between consumers and brands in the online environment. Despite the importance of this technology, very little attention has been paid to the investigation of the admin-avatar concept from a marketing perspective. Following a systematic review of the literature found in 10 major electronic databases and published between 1993 and 2013, significant gaps in literature were identified. Specifically, this research examines the nature of the admin-avatar concept, including its main characteristics, dimensions, and conditions as well as the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of admin-avatar users.Adopting the mixed methods design, a taxonomy was developed from interviews (qualitative phase) which laid the foundation for the development of the admin-avatar framework. Spiggle’s (1994) framework was adopted for the qualitative data analysis. A conceptual framework was developed and built on the theoretical foundations of reasoned action theory (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The admin-avatar framework was empirically tested through a series of lab-based experiments (quantitative phase). Following a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to purify the scales, determine the dimensionality of the constructs and support their convergent and discriminant validity. The context used for this study was the university admissions admin-avatar. propositions were tested using repeated measures (first experimental deign study), factorial design (second experimental deign study) and serial mediation techniques for both experimental studies. The results mostly support the taxonomy developed from the qualitative phase.This thesis contributes to the new technology in marketing and practice, specifically by: (1) providing a clear and comprehensive definition of the admin-avatar concept, (2) developing a comprehensive taxonomy of admin-avatar that enriches the area of new technology in marketing by the further investigations by applying the taxonomy to other contexts (e.g., schools, banks, retails and other commercial companies), and (3) confirming the notion that the addition of an admin-avatar will transform the consumer attitude towards the website and the brand. Furthermore, the addition of an admin-avatar will prompt consumers to engage in voluntary behaviours such as saying positive things about the organisation/brand (word of mouth) and recommending the brand and its products to other potential consumers (recommendation). In other words, adding the admin-avatar on the brand website will significantly change the attitudes of brand’s consumers. These positive attitudes will encourage consumers to do voluntary behviours for the brand. From a practical perspective, these findings offer practitioners a clearer and richer understanding of the admin-avatar, facilitating appropriate designs for admin-avatar(s). The findings of this research also give practitioners clear insights into the main advantages of the admin-avatar, such as the degree of its convenience (e.g., quickness and effortless), hedonism (excitement) and attractiveness