Improving Electronic Commerce Through Gathering Customer Data

Abstract

For companies and businesses to compete successfully in the world today, they need to efficiently gather and process information about their customers. With the rapid growth of commerce over the Internet, new opportunities to collect information have arisen. The information-gathering technologies discussed in this report are online questionnaires, Internet cookies, and customer profiles. Communications Industry Researchers, Inc. (CIR) needs an evaluation of these technologies and a design for collecting customer information in their electronic commerce system. The evaluation and design in this report are useful tools for companies with similar goals as CIR. A team of University of Virginia engineering students and I provided CIR with an electronic commerce system that can support Internet transactions. The objective of this project was to provide a customer information-gathering module capable of integration into the electronic commerce system. Secondary objectives are to discuss the Open Profiling Standard and to document design and implementation issues with the various technologies. The impacts of this project affect all companies and customers involved with electronic commerce. The deliverables to CIR are the electronic commerce system, the customer information-gathering module, and the documentation of technologies evaluated. The information-gathering module collects customer data through the use of online forms and Internet cookies. CIR received the deliverables and is currently using them. The customer data collected by the system is beneficial to CIR for decision- making.