We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
On the Taxonomies and Typologies of e-Customers in B2C e-Commerce.
- Authors
Hristoski, Ilija; Kostoska, Olivera
- Abstract
In the contemporary business surrounding, posed by the new, so-called 'digital economy', the e-Commerce paradigm became a decisive factor for both the survival and successfulness of companies. The whole concept is built on the existence of its two major pillars: the e-Customer and the e-Commerce website. The mutual interaction between these is determined by the e-Customer's online shopping behavior. Despite the fact that various e-Customers exhibit various online shopping behaviors, they can be categorized into classes, or types, by the similarities of their behavioral patterns. In the paper we distinguish between two kinds of online shopping behavior: the one which refers to the e-Customer's behavior prior to entering the virtual store (the aspect that is treated by e- Marketers and e-Retailers), and another kind, which refers to the e-Customer's behavior during online shopping sessions (the aspect that is important to engineers and capacity planners). Both aspects use categorizations of e-Customers into classes or types, sometimes called 'taxonomies', and sometimes 'typologies'. We also shed light not only on the differences between these two terms but also between the two aspects of online shopping behavior. The latter one leads to Customer Behavior Model Graphs (CBMGs) and e-Customer operating profiles. The rest of the paper deals with some of the issues related to the classical view of classification/categorization and ends up with a brief overview and qualitative analysis of some of the known typologies of e-Customer classes. Simultaneously, by analyzing the definition provided for a given e-Customer class, a cataloging of the factors that led to the introduction of particular e-Customer classes, has been conducted. As a result, two groups of factors have been identified: exogenous and endogenous factors, to describe the external and internal factors, respectively, affecting the online shopping behavior prior and after entering the virtual store. This way, the paper contributes to the clarification, systematization, modeling, and specification of e-Customer taxonomies and operating profiles, which makes the basis for building up predictive models suitable for evaluating performability measures.
- Subjects
ELECTRONIC commerce; ELECTRONIC services; BUSINESS to consumer transactions; ONLINE shopping; CONSUMER behavior
- Publication
Balkan & Near Eastern Journal of Social Sciences (BNEJSS), 2018, Vol 4, Issue 3, p130
- ISSN
2149-9314
- Publication type
Article