Segmenting Suppliers of e-commerce Transaction Brokers Case Study: Hotel Rooms Provider

摘要

The aim of this study is to develop model for segmenting suppliers suitable for transaction broker e-commerce systems, specifically hotel room providers. Transaction brokers act as market intermediaries that have two types of clients, which are customers and suppliers. Hence, they must employ both electronic Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM) and electronic Supplier Relationship Management (e-SRM) such that the firms can build strong and beneficial relationships with both parties. One of the most important e-SRM functions is segmenting suppliers, where the results are used to design unique services for each segment to strengthen relationships. Our research findings are: (1) Variables suitable for segmenting suppliers; (2) data warehouse design needed for the segmentation; (3) techniques for segmenting suppliers based on their value and churn tendency. We have conducted experiments using the case study data obtained from Klikhotel.com and the results indicate that our proposed techniques have successfully segmented suppliers.