Soft navigation in electronic product catalogs

Abstract

Current electronic product catalogs support only hard navigation in the product list. Products or product categories are displayed only if they match a criterion that a user has specified explicitly as a constraint or implicitly by following a navigation link. Hard navigation is problematic if users want to express soft preferences instead of hard constraints. Users will make suboptimal buying decisions if they mistake soft preferences for hard requirements and focus only on products that match all their preferences. Soft navigation is an alternative means to navigate product catalogs. Users express preferences which are used to evaluate products and display them in such a way that higher-scoring products are more visible than lower-scoring products. This paper presents a product scoring catalog (PSC) that supports soft navigation and allows users to express preferences and rate their importance by following a set of rules. The paper closes by outlining possible extensions to PSC and indicating research issues related to soft navigation product catalogs. © 2000 Springer-Verlag.