e-Consumer Online Behavior: A Basis for Obtaining e-Commerce Performance Metrics

Nowadays the e-Commerce and e-Business paradigm have prevailed all over the world, definitely changing the way of running businesses and shaping the new business environment. The Web-based business solutions have produced a novel type of a consumer, the e-Consumer, and a specific way of doing business on the Net, based upon the human – computer – Web interaction. The online behavior of the e-Consumer has proven to be a key not only to a successfulness of a given e-Commerce site, but also a key to obtain a significant knowledge about customer’s habits, needs, expectations, etc. Nonetheless, the e-Consumer online behavior can also be used as a basis for obtaining the basic Web performance metrics, necessary for assuring a relevant level of Quality of Service (QoS) through capacity planning. The paper aims to highlight some of the most important aspects of modeling e-Consumer online behavior regarding Web performance. We propose a novel approach to modeling online behavior, based on usage of Deterministic and Stochastic Petri Nets (DSPNs).