Abstract
The metaphor of a virtual sales assistant symbolizes an interactive Web application that serves online shoppers just as their human counterparts in brick & mortar businesses would do. They help to create an enjoyable shopping experience for users and are intended to bring a social and emotional perspective to e-commerce environments. Although, researchers have investigated dozens of interesting pilot applications, few have actually been commercialized. There is a big gap between the technological state of the art and what pays off for e-commerce sites from an economical point of view. Based on our industrial experience we discuss success factors for the development of cost-efficient and persuasive virtual sales assistants and contribute a framework for conversational sales recommender systems that includes a design environment for the efficient creation of virtual characters. Furthermore, this paper reports on experiences gathered from deployed applications.
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Zanker, M., Bricman, M., Jessenitschnig, M. (2009). Cost-Efficient Development of Virtual Sales Assistants. In: Damiani, E., Jeong, J., Howlett, R.J., Jain, L.C. (eds) New Directions in Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services - 2. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 226. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02937-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02937-0_1
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