Trust-based marketing on the Internet : design and implementation of algorithms for a GM customer advocacy site

Abstract

The future of marketing will be shaped by the Internet. Typical push-based marketing techniques have decreased in effectiveness due to the amount of information available on the Internet. In order to survive in the future, companies will need to adapt trust-based marketing techniques in order to survive on the Internet. The E-business group at MIT Sloan under the guidance of Prof. Urban is working on a website that applies trust techniques for GM. Automobile manufacturers, GM among them, have suffered from low trust levels from consumers. The purpose of this project is to determine whether certain trust factors in a website improve consideration and trust in GM. A large part of the website My Auto Advocate involves using advanced computer science algorithms and techniques in building the trust-based site. This thesis concentrates on what computer science problems are presented by building a trust-based site and how these problems are solved and implemented.