Intelligent Sales Support with CBR

Abstract

Electronic commerce applications are just about to leave their infancy. While electronic cash has been around for quite a few years, the amount of business carried out through the Internet is still relatively small compared to the potential of this young technology. There are plenty of reasons for this. Tennenbaum summarizes the barriers for using this medium today with the three words: confidence, convenience, and content. Customers must have confidence that their transactions are secure, their privacy is maintained, and they will not be subject to liability. It must be convenient, as simple to use as ATMs and as ubiquitous. Finally, there must be incentives to purchase goods via the Internet, be they a better price, service, or selection. The goal of using CBR in electronic commerce situations is to support a customer with better services and selection facilities. As in every ordinary paper-based information source or product catalogue, it is often very difficult for customers to find the information or products they actually need. Today, searching for information or the selection of complex products on the World Wide Web is a painstaking task for consumers as well as for business partners. The main reason for this well-known deficit in electronic commerce is that, compared to usual business procedures, there is no intelligent support or assistance in the selection of products/services or navigation through complex spaces of available product information or product alternatives on the Internet. Current product-oriented database search facilities are widely used and recognized as being limited in capability for sales support.