Enhancing on-line customer trust : animated advisor design and prototype

The emergence of e-commerce has significantly increased customer power and introduced many challenges to the traditional push-based marketing practices. Many businesses nowadays are considering repositioning their strategies to develop trust-based long-lasting relationships with an increasingly loyal customer base instead of bombarding passive customers with marketing campaigns. General Motors took a leading first step in this direction by launching an on-line tool, Auto-Choice-Advisor, that provides its visitors with unbiased advice on the vehicles that best fit their preferences. This document proposes trust-building enhancements to the Auto-Choice-Advisor site through the incorporation of a trusted animated advisor. It begins by reviewing the premise of trust-based marketing. It then presents simulation results that internally validate the "listening-in" methodology, an approach that listens to virtual dialogues between on-line customers and virtual advisors to identify viable new market opportunities. The document then builds on the findings and presents a design and a prototype for a new animated Auto-Choice-Advisor. Finally, the possibilities for future work are summarized.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Musa, Rami, 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Glen L. Urban.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29700

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29700