My Interests in MIS

Ryan Cunningham

So far this semester, we've talked about a number of emerging MIS topics. Something that is currently taking off right now and adding immediate business value is web analytics and customer relationship management. Web analytics can help automate the crm process in the e-business setting to make the purchasing process much more customer-oriented. A perfect example of this is Amazon.com's advanced referral system. When viewing an item, I can see what percentage of customer's who viewed that item purchased it. That is impressive, but it has been in use at Amazon for years now. What is still relatively new, is the effective use of user-created content in its referral system. Look at this picture:


I can see what other items customers bought, tag the product with a category or description, and view other user tags. I can click on those tags and view other items tagged with that same description. What's more? You can tag it right there on the spot without changing websites (Amazon would hate to send a potential buyer elsewhere), and you can search for other tag descriptions that you may be interested in. Amazon is also implementing its Beta version of Item Discussion. This will be the next generation of user reviews, where members will be able to discuss anything and everything about an item.

All of this user-generated content is allowing customers to refer items to other customers. One last way that Amazon is facilitating this is the Listmania function. When viewing a product, you can scroll down to see what user-created lists contain that product in them. These lists can be one user's "Top 50 of 2006" or something as random as "Not Your Average Movies About Dating or Violence." The point is that users are talking to each other through Amazon, and while they are interacting they are spending more and more time on Amazon, making them more and more likely to purchase something--something they may not have even thought of when initially visiting the site. That is what I see the convergence of web analytics and crm moving towards: User-created content creating a second layer of involvement that also creates business. Amazon remains supreme in this field which helps it stay on top of the internet retail business today.