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In any competitive business, success is based on the ability to make an item more appealing to customers than the competition. A number of questions arise in the context of this task: how do we formalize and quantify the competitiveness between two items? Who are the main competitors of a given item? What are the features of an item that most affect its competitiveness? Despite the impact and relevance of this problem to many domains, only a limited amount of work has been devoted toward an effective solution. In this paper, we present a formal definition of the competitiveness between two items, based on the market segments that they can both cover. Our evaluation of competitiveness utilizes customer reviews, an abundant source of information that is available in a wide range of domains. We present efficient methods for evaluating competitiveness in large review datasets and address the natural problem of finding the top-k competitors of a given item. Finally, we evaluate the quality of our results and the scalability of our approach using multiple datasets from different domains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modern business is rushing toward e-commerce. If the transition is done properly, it enables better management, new services, lower transaction costs and better customer relations. Success depends on skilled information technologists, among whom are statisticians. This paper focuses on some of the contributions that statisticians are making to help change the business world, especially through the development and application of data mining methods. This is a very large area, and the topics we cover are chosen to avoid overlap with other papers in this special issue, as well as to respect the limitations of our expertise. Inevitably, electronic commerce has raised and is raising fresh research problems in a very wide range of statistical areas, and we try to emphasize those challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report an extensive analysis of the different business models for auctions found on the Web. Three hundred websites randomly selected from the main search engines are analyzed, classified, commented and compared in terms of their basic parameters. Departing from a theoretical review of the classical auction theory applied to the online world, twelve business models are defined and analyzed. The confusing terminology regarding the new online auction models is also conveniently organized. The results show that the new possibilities brought by the popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web are making possible emergent business models in both the business-to-consumer and the business-to-business arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2004.03.049 Byline: Arben Asllani (a), Alireza Lari (b) Keywords: Genetic algorithms; Multiple criteria analysis; Data mining; Web design optimization Abstract: In today's competitive electronic marketplace, companies try to create long-lasting relations with their online customers. Log files and registration forms generate millions of online transactions. Companies use new techniques to 'mine' these data and establish optimal online storefronts to maximize their web presence. Several criteria, such as minimization of download time, maximization of web-site visualization and product association level, can be used for the optimization of virtual storefronts. This paper introduces a genetic algorithm, to be used in a model-driven decision-support system for web-site optimizations. The algorithm ensures multiple criteria web-site optimizations, and the genetic search provides dynamic and timely solutions independent of the number of objects to be arranged. Author Affiliation: (a) University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, TN 37403, United States (b) Department of Management, School of Business and Economics, 1200 Murchison Rd. Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, NC 28301, United States Article History: Received 25 August 2003; Accepted 26 March 2004