Susan Sproule

A buyer behaviour framework for the development and design of software agents in e-commerce

Software agents are computer programs that run in the background and perform tasks autonomously as delegated by the user. Although there has been much research on this topic recently, usable software agents are at an early stage of development, and are only now starting to appear in real applications. Typical of these early stages, there has been a technology focus, rather than a product focus, in much of the development work to date. A fruitful application area for software agents is in the area of e‐commerce, where potential buyers can easily be overwhelmed by the flood of information that is available, thus potentially making less than optimal purchasing decisions. This paper blends models from marketing and learnings from the field of decision support systems to build a framework for the design of software agents to support in e‐commerce buying applications.

Measuring identity theft and identity fraud

Identity theft and fraud are an increasing concern to consumers who interact with online businesses routinely. This paper presents a process-oriented model of consumer identity theft and fraud, and reports on a 2008 survey of Canadian consumers. Results are reported in standard categories of fraud: credit card, existing accounts, new accounts, and other fraud. We found that 20% of participants have stopped or reduced online shopping, and 9% have stopped or reduced online banking activities. These findings are of concern to business and government since, if consumers stop doing business online, the productivity benefits of e-business will not be realised.