Personalization in Business-to-Consumer Interaction

As electronic catalogs are visited by users having different interests and knowledge about products, the role of personalization in e-commerce has been increasingly recognized [6]. Several B2C tools have been extended with the one-to-one recommendation of products (e.g., BroadVision: www.broadvision.com). Moreover, other systems have been developed to adapt the presentation of information to the user’s physical capabilities [5] and device [4]. SeTA (Servizi Telematici Adattativi) is a toolkit for the creation of Web-based stores supporting user-adaptive, multilingual interactions with customers. This system aims to tailor the presentation of products to the customer’s interests and information needs and has been used to develop an electronic catalog describing telecommunication products. The personalized presentation of information is based on three main ideas: 1. Product features specify different types of information such as general data (price), aesthetic information (size, color), and technical information (functionalities, requirements). This characterization is exploited to customize the product presentations, according to the user’s interests. 2. More or less technically detailed descriptions are generated to suit the user’s knowledge. 3. The amount of information presented is tailored to the user's interests and receptivity, showing only the most relevant data and hiding other details that the user can reach on demand as supplementary information.