The Internet Encyclopedia (Volume 3)

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Personalization and Customization TechnologiesPersonalization and Customization Technologies

Sviatoslav Braynov,State University of New York at Buffalo

Introduction 51

User Profiling 51

Factual and Behavioral Profiles 51

Explicit Versus Implicit Profiling 53

Overview of Filtering Technologies 53

Rule-Based Filtering 53

Collaborative Filtering 53

Content-Based Filtering 54

Web Usage Analysis for Personalization 54

Web Usage Data 54

Mechanisms for User Identification 55

Session Identification 55

Clickstream Analysis 55

Intelligent Agents for Personalization 56

Location-Based Personalization 56

Preference Modeling 57

Preference Elicitation 57

Reasoning with Conditional Preferences 58

Preference-Based Queries 58

Applications 58

Adaptive Web Sites 58

Recommender Systems 59

Adaptive Web Stores 59

Customer Relationship Management 60

Personalization and Privacy 61

Conclusion 62

Glossary 62

Cross References 62

References 62

INTRODUCTION

Personalization and customization are considered in-

creasingly important elements of Web applications. The

terms usually refer to using information about a user (be

it a customer, a Web site visitor, an individual, or a group)

to better design products and services tailored to that user.

One way to define personalization is by describing how it

is implemented and used.

Personalization is a toolbox of technologies and

application features used in the design of an end-

user experience. Features classified as person-

alization are wide-ranging, from simple display

of the end-user’s name on a Web page, to com-

plex catalog navigation and product customiza-

tion based on deep models of users’ needs and

behaviors. (Kramer, Noronha, & Vergo, 2000)

The Personalization Consortium (Personalization Con-

sortium, n.d.), an international advocacy group formed to

promote the development and use of personalization tech-

nology on the Web, offers the following definition:

Personalization is the combined use of technol-

ogy and customer information to tailor electronic

commerce interactions between a business and

each individual customer.

Personalization usually means gathering and storing

information about Web site visitors and analyzing this

information in order to deliver the right content in a

user-preferred form and layout. Personalization helps to

increase customer satisfaction, promote customer loy-

alty by establishing a one-to-one relationship between a

Web site and its visitor, and increase sales by providing

products and services tailored to customers’ individual

needs. The goal of personalization is to better serve the

customer by anticipating his needs; it customizes services

and products, and establishes a long-term relationship en-

couraging the customer to return for subsequent visits.

Although both customization and personalization re-

fer to the delivery of information, products, or services

tailored to users’ needs, the two notions differ in several

respects. Customization is usually used to describe the in-

terface attributes that are user-controlled. That is, the user

is in control and is able to configure a Web site, a prod-

uct, or a service according to his or her preferences and

requirements. The system is almost passive and provides

only a means by which the actual configuration is done.

Customization is usually done manually by the user, ac-

cording to his preferences. An example of customization

is My Yahoo (http://my.yahoo.com), shown in Figure 1. In

My Yahoo a user can customize content by selecting from

various modules (portfolios, company news, weather, cur-

rency converter, market summary, etc.) and placing them

on a customized Web page, which is updated periodically.

In this case, the locus of control lies with the user, who

manually selects the modules on the page. In contrast,

personalization is automatically performed by a Web site

based on the history of previous interactions with the user,

on the user’s profile, or on the profiles of like-minded

users. For example, Amazon.com recommends items to

a user and creates personalized Web pages based on the

user’s navigation and purchase history.

USER PROFILING

Factual and Behavioral Profiles

Personalization requires some information about the

user’s preferences, needs, goals, and expectations. In-

formation that describes a particular user is called a

user profile. Adomavicius and Tuzhilin (1999) consider

51