An electronic commerce application for hardware components - a step towards 1 : 1 marketing

The Internet is an extremely fast-growing electronic market. Due to the num ber of different dealers and offers it becomes more and more difficult for clients to keep track and make the right buying decision. Electronic commer ce applications have the potential to provide customers with targeted infor mation and to increase the customer relationship in the sense of 1:1 market ing strategies. This article gives an overview of the state of the art and describes a prototype of an electronic commerce application for computer ha rdware (http://www.Hardware.de). The so called "infobroker" consists of an individual configurable newsletter an offer assistant and a channel. The ad ministration and improvement of the users' profiles is partly done automati cally by evaluating their habits and actions within the system.