Introduction to the Special Section: Advances in Electronic Commerce Customer Relationship Management
Jerry Fjermestad and Nicholas C. Romano, Jr., Guest Editors
International Journal of Electronic Commerce,
Volume 7, Number 2, Fall 2002, pp. 7.
This is the second special section on Electronic Commerce Customer Relationship Management (ECCRM) in the International Journal of Electronic Commerce. The initial versions of the four papers it includes first appeared, among a number of others, in the proceedings of the Internet and Digital Economy Track at the Thirty-fifth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35), held in January 2002. The four articles in the section all make significant contributions to the ECCRM theme. The original versions of the articles were extensively revised and improved by the authors and then blind-reviewed by four experienced reviewers. The papers were subsequently revised based on comments from the reviewers and the editors of the special section. These papers represent the next level of research on ECCRM.
In the first paper, “Implementing Polyinstantiation as a Strategy for Electronic Commerce Customer Relationship Management,” Nenad Juki´c, Boris Juki´c, Laurie A. Meamber, and George Nezlek apply polyinstantiation from the database world to ECCRM in order to improve the coordination of business-customer interactions.
In the second paper, “Satisfaction with Internet-Based Services: The Role of Expectations and Desires,” Mohamed Khalifa and Vanessa Liu develop a model for explaining and predicting customer satisfaction based on customer expectations and desires. The new model is tested empirically to prove its superiority over its predecessors.
The third paper, “Extended Web Assessment Method (EWAM): Evaluation of Electronic Commerce Applications from the Customer’s Viewpoint” by Petra Schubert, analyzes commercial Web sites, using the Extended Web Assessment Method. The findings suggest that the Web sites do not meet customers’ expectations.
In the final paper in the section, “Customer Relationship Management for the Web-Access Challenged: Inaccessibility of Fortune 250 Business Web Sites,” Nicholas C. Romano, Jr., explores the concept of Web site accessibility in relation to ECCRM and establishes an initial metric for the top Fortune 250 company Web sites. The findings reveal that the majority of these firms are not following the guidelines on Web accessibility. He offers some universal suggestions to improve Web accessibility and presents directions for further research.
JERRY FJERMESTAD (fjermestad@adm.njit.edu) is an associate professor in the School of Management at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. He received a B.A. in chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University, an M.S. in operations research from Polytechnic University, an M.B.A in operations management from Iona College, and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University in management information systems. Dr. Fjermestad has taught courses on management information systems, decision support systems, systems analysis and design, electronic commerce, data warehousing, and graduate seminars in information systems. His research interests are collaborative technology, decision support systems, data warehousing, electronic commerce, global information systems, customer relationship management, and enterprise information systems. He has published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Group Decision and Negotiation, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Information and Management, Decision Support Systems, Logistics and Information Management, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, and the Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
NICHOLAS J. ROMANO, JR. (Nicholas-Romano@mstm.okstate.edu) is an assistant professor of management science and information systems at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Romano is founder and co-chair of the minitracks on Electronic Commerce Customer Relations Management (ECCRM) for the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) and the Hawai’i International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS). Previously, he was a research scientist at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Management of Information, where he helped to design, develop, and evaluate collaborative technologies to improve group productivity. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona in the summer of 2000, 2001, and 2002. His research interests include collaborative computing, Web-based application design and development, technology-supported learning, interface design for group support systems, knowledge creation and management, and e-commerce customer relationship management. Dr. Romano received his Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Arizona. He has been a technical consultant for GroupSystems.COM and worked for IBM as a systems programmer. Dr. Romano has published papers in a number of scholarly journals, conference proceedings, and practitioner journals, including the Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Information Technology and Management, Business Process Management Journal, Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, Proceedings of the Conference of the Association of Management, Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems, and the IBM AS/400 Systems Management Journal.