Recently, the effectiveness of Aspect Model (AM) which is one of the probabilistic latent class models in recommender systems has been pointed out in many researches. In practical cases of application for the item recommendation, the parameters of AM are usually estimated by using the purchase history data. However, the finite number of the purchase history data is sometimes not enough to estimate the parameters of AM in real EC sites. On the other hand, customers tend to browse many product items before they purchase an item. If the abundant browsing history data and the purchase history data can be used for estimation of AM simultaneously, the estimation accuracy of AM would be improved. In this study, we propose a new latent class model expressing both browsing and purchasing behaviors and a learning algorithm to estimate the parameters of the proposed model. The effectiveness of our proposed method is clarified by a simulation analysis and an application to a real data.

Precise market research and information sharing in an organization are important to advance new product development smoothly. In this case study, we investigated the effectiveness of the newly constructed methods for market research and information sharing in new product development process. First, at the early stage of market research, we developed Emergent Storytelling based on several theories about “Antenarrative” (story before completed narrative) as a method, practiced research by using stories of customers using a new product, and confirmed its effectiveness. Secondly, we practiced storytelling via ICT with the final story generated from market research to share the information about the value of the new product in our organization. Eventually, we found that storytelling via ICT is effective for information sharing in the organization because of interaction between advantages of storytelling and ICT.

Internet banking makes it possible for users to check a bank account balance and make payments through bank transfers using a personal computer or a smartphone. It offers many advantages, not only for consumers, but also for financial institutions. This has motivated the authors to seek suggestions to financial institutions for accelerating consumers’ usage of Internet banking. Four hypotheses were proposed to identify the differences in consciousness and behavior between users and non-users of Internet banking. By conducting a consumer survey and a corresponding data analysis, the authors found that users of Internet banking, unlike non-users, tend to make purchases online. The authors also found that users of Internet banking gather information more often by using various media and Internet services as compared to non-users. Through hypothesis testing, the authors found evidences to support suggestions to financial institutions for accelerating consumers’ usage of Internet banking.