Customized Internet news services based on customer profiles

The widespread adoption of the Internet and information technologies has changed the nature of many industries through easy collection, analysis, and sharing of information. This transformation of information processing makes rapid response and product customization become the major concerns in marketing and strategic planning. This is particularly significant in the industries that offer digital contents to their clients, such as consulting and news services. Due to the digital nature of their products, fully customized services over the Internet is possible. To customize services, however, a company needs to well understand its customers and consequently provide tailored product/services based on their preference.In this paper, a news recommendation system that allows a news service provider to analyze its customer profile and then produce customized news services is developed. The method determines customer interests from the structure of the news read by a client and the reading time. Once customer profile is constructed, personal news services can be provided by the system. An empirical study using actual news provided by the China Times shows that the recommendation system outperforms the traditional headline news compiled by the news editor in both objective performance indices and customer satisfaction. In addition to news services, this approach can be generalized to other industries and services whose products can be digitized, such as consulting and knowledge management.