• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.155-167
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• 2004

At this time, the two main techniques for achieving web personalization assistant systems generally concern direct manipulation and software agents. While both direct manipulation and software agents are intended for permitting user to complete tasks rapidly, efficiently, and easily, their methodologies are different. The central debate involving these web personalization techniques originates from the amount of control that each allows to, or holds back from, the users. Direct manipulation can provide users with comprehensibel, predictable and controllable user interfaces that give them a feeling of accomplishnent and responsibility. On the other hand, the intelligent software components, the agents, can assist users with artificial intelligence by monitoring or retrieving personal histories or behaviors. In this empirical study, two web personalization assistant systems are evaluated. One of them, WebPersonalizer, is an agent based user personalization tool; the other, AntWorld, is a collaborative recommendation tool which provides direct manipulation interfaces. Through this empirical study, we have focused on two different paradigms as web personalization assistant systems : direct manipulation and software agents. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages. We also provide the experimental result that is worth referring for developers of electronic commerce system and suggest the methodologies for conveniently retrieving necessary information based on their personal needs.