Comparative Study of Analytical Product Selection Support Mechanisms

Electronic commerce and the buying of goods electronically on the Internet is gaining momentum. An important step when buying products online is the selection process. A wide variety of mechanisms supporting this step can be found in commercial online catalogs and research prototypes. However, it is often difficult to access how users will use these selection support mechanisms. In this paper we want to contribute to a better understanding of mechanisms that support analytical product selection: filtering, visualization, and evaluation. We will report results of a study in which the usage of three catalogs that employ different combinations of these selection support mechanisms is compared.