Development of intelligent customer assistant in virtual shopping

• Main Author: Tan, Xiao Mei.
• Other Authors: Martin Erik Gustav Helander
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/46115
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Grocery stores with different sizes of establishment and providing different range of goods and services can be found everywhere. Grocery shopping, no matter how often it is performed, is a necessary process where food products and household merchandises are purchased. It is an essential part of every day’s life. With the increase in accessibility to the Internet, more enterprises are exploring electronic commerce. The selling of groceries is no longer constricted to a brick and mortar store but is given the opportunity to explore the possibilities of e-commerce. In this report, the empirical consumer data was collected from 52 grocery shoppers in Singapore in January 2011 through research instruments like the survey and the think aloud approach was studied to support the hypotheses. The subjects selected for the test was a sample representation of the target grocery shopper profile. Through the analysis, it was discovered that female consumers are usually the grocery shoppers and their frequency of grocery shopping is higher than the male counterparts. Younger shoppers tend to be more open to the idea of shopping online for groceries and they tend to more informed with the availability of e-Grocery. It was found that a consumer’s shopping type affects their willingness to try online grocery shopping and also a sales assistant’s input on their choice in purchasing plays a part in promoting online grocery shopping. For the grocery industry, the findings from this study will help provide an understanding on grocery shopping, and help develop and improve the online grocery stores and the virtual shopping assistant.