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Heterogeneous product description in electronic commerce

The heterogeneity of product descriptions is an impediment to successful interactions among buyers and vendors in electronic commerce. There is no uniform description even for the same product type among different vendors. In electronic commerce activities involving interactions among different vendors (business-to-business) or between a buyer and vendors (consumer-to-business), a common ontology for products is critical. There are two approaches to resolve the information heterogeneity problem in electronic commerce: standardization and integration. This short paper presents an overview of these approaches and shows that even with standardization efforts, some form of integration would still be required due to the potential multiplicity of standards and their degree of acceptance.