Web Systems Design and Online Consumer Behavior [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Background

The software agent with roots in problem solving and knowledge
representation is not a new concept, but had not grown until the past decade when the Internet
created a perfect environment for e-commerce. Dr. Pattie Maes, founder of the MIT Media Lab
Software Agent Group, and other researchers have developed a number of intelligent shopping agents.
Based on the customer buyer behavior (CBB) model, Maes and Guttman (1999) identified and
implemented six stages of the buying process: need identification, product brokering, negotiation,
purchase and delivery, and product service, and evaluation. Need identification characterizes the
buyer’s need. Product brokering includes retrieval of product recommendations to help determine
what to buy. Merchant brokering utilizes merchant ratings to help determine who to buy from.
Negotiation considers how to settle on the terms of transactions. Purchase and delivery signal
termination of the transaction process. Product service and evaluation involve post-purchase
services and evaluation of satisfaction with the overall buying experience and the decision.

Shopping agent Web sites represent the newest trend in Internet shopping technology and have
been accepted by a large number of e-merchants and online shoppers. The most popular shopping agent
Web sites are bestWebBuys, bizRate, dealTime, mySimon, RUSure, and nextTag. Although it is
difficult to determine how these agent Web sites have affected online sales of individual
merchants, more and more merchants have subscribed to agent Web sites to attract more customers.
For example, the PriceGrabber company, which added software agents for e-shopping and raised the
standard for online shoppers’ comparison Web sites on November 8, 1999, had 1,050 subscribed
merchants by the end of October 2003. The growth rate for the number of subscribed merchants was
about 10% each month.

Academic interest in shopping agents has grown rapidly. Resnick et al. (2000) predicted that
reputation systems that rely on the participation of large numbers of individuals accumulate trust
simply by operating effectively over time. With clear reputation ratings, merchants with good
reputations could charge a premium for their services, since some users may be willing to pay for
the security and comfort of high-quality services. Cooke et al. (2002) explored how consumers
respond to recommendations of unfamiliar products made by shopping agents. Ganesh and Amit (2003)
examined the impact of Internet shopping agents (ISAs) on market competition and indicated that an
ISA can potentially prevail over the competition due to the mass of consumers attracted to the
site. The equilibrium of inside pricing is such that the average price charged can increase or
decrease when more retailers join. In April, the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology hosted a symposium sponsored by the National Science Foundation on the
Online Reputation Mechanism. The potential financial implications of online reputation and fraud
risk management were discussed.