Collaborative CRM : Channel management in information-based electronic commerce

Abstract

Company produces and/or provides products and/or services and customers buy that products or services. This is a simple and basic relationship between the company and their customers. In early stage, most companies focused on their products/services. They thought that customers are accompanied with their products/services. But, customers search for products and services which correspond to their own preferences. In this manner, companies’ major focuses were shifted from product itself to customers. In addition, from the early 1990’s, the Internet and Web have changed our daily life. Also, the explosive growth of the Internet and the increasing popularity of Web have generated a new form of commerce; electronic commerce (e-commerce). The e-commerce is empowering customers to lead the relationship between customers and companies and it enables companies to use the Internet and Web as a new channel. In a multi-channel environment, channel management is not only determining the best channel by which to communicate with and sell to customers but also resolving existing channel conflicts. In this manner, channel management, mainly focused on resolving channel conflicts, becomes a hot issue of incumbent companies. This thesis introduces the VOC analysis framework which is aimed at suppressing customer complaints. A multi-dimensional analysis of VOC was introduced. In the VOC forecasting framework, internal/external events were considered to adjust the forecasting results. Furthermore, new paradigm of VOC analysis was provided. That is, the VOC from their profitable customer, product, and channel should be a major concern of companies. Personalization is another hot issue of CRM. Companies want to provide personalized information to a group of customers to motivate them. And, Web mining is an excellent approach for achieving this goal. This thesis introduce a Web ad selection system using Web usage mining as an application of personalization which is being fueled by...