The explosive growth of the Internet and the rapid adoption of the Internet as a commercial medium have changed fundamentally the way business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) commerce is conducted in the world. They have generated significant interest in the development of B2C and B2B markets all over the world.
Nowadays the maturity of the B2C markets has resulted in two rigorous research areas, such as agent mediation and e-enabling customer relationship management (CRM). As well as in B2C electronic commerce (EC) environment, agent technologies and CRM play important roles in B2B EC markets to facilitate business transactions and increase company’s revenue, and to gain competitive advantage.
The rigorous researches on the agent technology are mainly due to the existence of the non-automated buying process, from which can be more or less relieved by using software agent technologies. The researches on CRM are fundamentally attributable to the increasing competitiveness in the retail business. In such a competitive environment a successful retailer must provide a bundle of customized services in order to survive and gain competitive advantage. These are why this thesis considers them as the important themes and thus focuses on the development of e-enabling static and dynamic CRM models, which can be utilized in B2C or B2B commerce.
This thesis introduces the static CRM model and proposes the new one-to-one marketing strategies utilizing it in B2C EC environment. In order to build successful e-CRM solutions in the B2C markets, this thesis utilizes data mining techniques. One-to-one marketing strategies utilizing the static CRM model allow retailers to analyze the offline and online data about customers in order to capture their buying behavior patterns. They also allow retailers to select the right customers on whom to focus, and to offer the right marketing campaigns including direct mails and e-mails to the existing customers, and to identify vulnerable customers who may be about to leave. This results in the increase in profit gains through customer segmentation and targeted marketing promotions or campaigns because of a greatly improved ability to respond to each individual contact in the best way, and in the decline in marketing costs due to properly allocated resources.
The majority of researches on CRM have focused the static CRM, which carries on online customer relationship management at a given point in time. Virtually little application of the dynamic (longitudinal) CRM has been reported to date. Because customers all the time change their behavioral patterns, the dynamic CRM, which focuses on customer relationship being adaptive to time, has to be taken into account for providing successful online support to realize a loyal customer base, increased revenue, and an insurmountable competitive advantage.
Thus this thesis tries to extend the static CRM model to the dynamic one utilizing data mining and a Monitoring Agent System (MAS) embodying the dynamic model to extract longitudinal knowledge from the customer data and to analyze customer behavior patterns over time for an online retailer.
Finally, this thesis focuses on the development of the merchant brokering agent system that can be utilized in the horizontal B2B marketplaces. It embodies both CRM and supplier relationship management (SRM), which are used to establish and strengthen the relationships between suppliers and buyers in B2B EC. Matchmaker as a merchant brokering agent system has several distinguishing features that make it a unique solution in today’s fast-paced B2B EC environment: CRM and SRM, Multi-attribute brokering and negotiation, Two-tiered qualifications, and Supply/Demand Aggregation/Segregation.
인터넷의 폭발적인 성장과 상업적인 도구로의 급속한 채택은 기업과 소비자간 그리고 기업과 기업간의 상행위 형태를 근본적으로 변화시키고 있다. 또한 전세계적으로 기업과 소비자, 기업과 기업을 연결시켜주는 온라인 가상 시장의 폭발적인 성장의 기폭제 역할을 하고 있다.
오늘날 기업과 소비자간 온라인 시장의 성장은 에이전트 기반 기술과 고객관계관리에 (CRM: Customer Relationship Management) 대한 왕성한 연구를 촉진시키고 있는데 이는 기업과 기업을 연결해주는 가상 시장에서도 중요한 연구 주제로 각광을 받고 있다. 에이전트 기술은 구매자의 구매 행위를 자동화 시켜줌으로써 인간을 비창의적인 업무로부터 해방시켜주는 소프트웨어 기술로 인정이 되어지고 있고 고객관계관리는 심화되고 있는 경쟁 환경에서 기업의 생존권 수호 차원에서 왕성하게 연구되어지는 분야이다.
본 논문에서는 이처럼 중요성을 더해가고 있는 두 가지 주제에 대해 심화 연구한다. 1장의 서론에 이어 2장에서는 관련 분야의 문헌 연구, 3장에서는 기업과 소비자간 전자 상거래에서 고객관계관리에 대한 정적인 연구를 수행하며, 4장에서는 동적인 방법론으로의 확장과 적용 시스템을 연구, 개발한다. 5장에서는 수평적 기업간 전자상거래에 적용할 수 있는 머천트 브로커링 에이전트 시스템 (Merchant Brokering Agent System)의 설계와 적용 가능성에 대한 연구를 수행한다. 매치메이커 (Matchmaker) 라고 명명한 머천트 브로커링 에이전트 시스템이 3장과 4장에서 심화 연구한 고객관계관리 기법과 전자상거래 분야에서 새로이 제안되어지고 있는 공급자관계관리를 (SRM: Supplier Relationship Management) 공히 활용하도록 함으로써 전체적인 논문이 전자상거래 연구에 있어 통합적 접근이 이루어지도록 한다.
