Evaluation and optimization of the catalog search process of e-procurement platforms [An article from: Electronic Commerce Research and Applications]

This digital document is a journal article from Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
With the emerging of e-catalog standards the product search can be used in a very different and improved matter. Beyond the usual keyword search this opens the arena for attribute-based search engines, including parametric search and preference search. We analyze the impact of different search techniques for such e-catalogs on the overall search process costs. It turns out that preference search has a high potential to significantly reduce the process costs. A large-scale use case with the MAN2B e-procurement platform supports our claim. We identify improvements achievable by using preference search, in particular less navigation steps during the product search and better search results due to the BMO query model. Expensive cases, where frustrated users accept bad search results or phone up the company's purchasing department, should decrease significantly. This in turn will enable the purchasing department to focus more on strategic issues like supplier relationship management than on operative issues as it still happens widely today.