Abstract
As online fashion businesses achieve rapid growth in the last few years, they gather various kinds of customer information through customer registration procedures and expect to utilize this information for CRM programs. The purpose of this study were to understand the current practices of customer information management of online fashion companies and to discuss how to improve it for the benefit of both customers and fashion businesses. This study included three steps of empirical data collection process: First, online fashion companies were visited and content analyzed at three time periods-2002, 2003, and 2004. Second, a questionnaire was developed and surveyed with 488 customers. And third, interviews with two groups were conducted, one with customers who experienced customer registration with online fashion companies and the other with experts of web developing. Through customer registration procedures, personal and contact information such as name, citizen registration number(social security number), home address, home telephone number, and cellular phone number were most frequently required. Customers were asked to provide more specific information regarding their privacy, online behavior, and taste recently. The variety of information category in 2004 observation was larger than 2002, but the amount of required information from each company got smaller. Customers tended to provide some false infor- mation, and the most frequently cited reason for that was 'too much hassle' and 'no practical benefit from information provision'. Customers were concerned with the exposure of personal information such as citizen registration number. The ideal number of pieces of information required was identified as 3 to 5 including name, phone number, and address. The paper was concluded with the discussion of customer information management from CRM perspective, CRM program, information analysis methods, and security.
