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Project: CoRa: Customer Rating

Project description

Goal of the "Customer Rating (CoRa)" project is to provide companies with a service to indentify and evaluate the customer-individual payment risk. Furthermore, the evaluation is to be used as a base for interactive price mechanism to optimize the price fixing therewith.

Several studies show the increasing importance of the internet as a sales channel. Companies therefore also have to ajust their internal processes increasingly to the new sales channel. In some sectors, this becomes specially clear: According to a survey by the German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association, in the year 2007 already 48% of all orders in the distance selling were placed via the internet. The association anticipates a growth in sales for the sales channel internet for 9% to an amount of 11,9 billion Euro (source: www.versandhandel.org). However, the chance of rising sales in the sales channel internet is accompanied by an increasing payment risk for the companies (as for example stolen identities or bank accounts are used or as orders are placed in spite of an overdrawn account). A big challenge for the companies therefore is the identification of the (anonymous) customer, as well as the identification and evaluation of this customer's payment risk. For small and medium-sized traders with small profit margins, the payment risk problem may become existential as they need a multiple of sales to compensate a single, unpaid order. Generally, the trader can completely avoid a payment risk by only delivering after having received prepayments. However, current studies show a connection between the range of payment options and the shopping cancellation rate: Customers in Germany favor payment upon receipt of invoice or direct debting scheme on the internet. If the trader only offers a prepayment option, many customers cancel their shopping and the trader loses sales. The CoRa project's goal therefore is, to develop a out-of-box solution specially designed for small and medium-sized traders which evaluates the payment risk on an order by an end customer and gives advice how to handle this risk (f.ex. a customer-individual, risk-based control of the range of available payment options in an online shop). Following questions are addressed:
- Which instruments are there to identify, evaluate and control the payment risk for end customers?
- Which data is taken into account for this process and which relevancy for the prediction is contained?
- Which additional data, considering data privacy and consumer protection, is of use at the indentification of refusal of payment or illiquidity and for the prediction of the payment risk?

In the scope of CoRa, it is furthermore investiated how the to-be developed risk evaluation could be also used in context of interactive pricing mechanisms which gain importance on marketplaces like E-Bay, and, in contrast to traditional fixed price models, allow a customer-individual reagard of the payment risk at the price fixing. For reverse pricing mechanisms, for example, an individually adjusted additional risk charge by means of a "fee" would be possible, or, for "posted prices", this additional charge could be directly included. Interactive pricing mechanisms were studied from the perspective of sales optimation so far (see f.ex. studies in the PREMIUM project, 2005). Taking into account payment risk when designing mechanisms like reverse pricing on the other hand forms a base for the optimation of the trader's possible profit. Results of the CoRa project are furthermore processed in the CuVE (Customer Value Estimation) project.

Duration

1 September 2008 until 31 August 2009

Project manager

Partners

InfoVeritas GmbH, INOBAS GmbH

Funding

  • Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)

Publications

Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge