User profiling and virtual agents: a case study on e-commerce services

  • Authors:
  • Giovanni Semeraro;Verner Andersen;Hans H. K. Andersen;Marco de Gemmis;Pasquale Lops

  • Affiliations:
  • Università degli Studi di Bari, Dipartimento di Informatica, Via E. Orabona, 4, I70126, Bari, Italy;Risoe National Laboratory, Systems Analysis Department, P.O. 49DK-4000, Frederiksborgvej 399, Build. 110, I70126, Roskilde, Denmark;National Research Centre for the Working Environment, P.O. 49DK-4000, Lersø Parkallé 105, 2100, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark;Università degli Studi di Bari, Dipartimento di Informatica, Via E. Orabona, 4, I70126, Bari, Italy;Università degli Studi di Bari, Dipartimento di Informatica, Via E. Orabona, 4, I70126, Bari, Italy

  • Venue:
  • Universal Access in the Information Society
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The main contribution of this work is the design of an application framework based on both conversational agents and user profiling technologies for the development of e-commerce services. User profiles are exploited by conversational agents to help customers in retrieving potentially interesting products from a catalogue. Three techniques were used for collecting data for a usability test: eye-movement tracking, questionnaire, and recording the user-system dialogue. The main outcomes of the experimental sessions are: (1) the dialogue capabilities of the agent facilitate the interaction between the user and the e-commerce site; and, (2) user profiles improve the retrieval capabilities of the agent. Finally, some limitations of the user profiling techniques adopted in the framework are discussed and a more sophisticated content-based profiling technique is proposed.