Leveraging Online Information to Build Customer Relationships

Abstract

Collecting and analyzing the available information about customers is at the core of building customer relationships. This chapter categorizes potential sources of online customer information and presents examples for their utilization in an Internet business context. Methods to gather and analyze customer preferences and expectations as well as to visualize the actual behavior of Web Information Systems users are identified and categorized according to information source. In analogy to customer tracking in traditional retailing outlets, the chapter demonstrates the need to capture and visualize how users approach and navigate through Web Information Systems in order to maximize the customer delivered value in global electronic commerce.