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Personalised services, which make customers feel that service employees are polite, friendly and exhibit personal warmth, and that customers are unique and valued, are essential in building good customer relationships. Establishing personalised relationships on the Internet appears impossible. However, the characteristics of reduced cues and asychronised communications make email an effective tool for cultivating relationships between e-retailers and their customers. A sample of 254 students from a university in Northern Taiwan participated in an experiment. Structural equation modelling revealed that frequent personalised emails improve the relationship between e-retailers and their customers, enhance service quality and engender customer loyalty. Furthermore, personalised emails enhance relationship quality more for female customers than for male customers. Finally, future research and managerial implications are discussed.

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Purpose-This study seeks to develop a framework of analysis that categorizes features of e-government web site design in a matrix of knowledge-acquiring process versus learners' values. The proposed framework supports a development plan for a cyber governmental web site that may involve all aspects of a learning process. Design/methodology/approach-A framework for analysis is first proposed. Data were obtained from 137 part-time students during a class. Participants were requested to enter the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) web site to learn a subject of their choice in a computer lab. The instruments used for obtaining their opinions were open-ended questionnaires. Two focus group interviews were also conducted. An iterative analyzing strategy based on grounded theory was employed to obtain the results. Findings-Analytical results of the data based on the framework reveals many insights. Participants indicated that navigational aids, knowledge contents and other designs related to interactive knowledge sharing are important. Nevertheless, e-government webmasters often ignore these important features. The proposed framework is a valuable tool for web site development and maintenance. Originality/value-Although many theories about the usability of e-government web sites have been proposed, the needs of individual learners have seldom been addressed. Since learning is critical to economic prosperity and social cohesion, the factors that make an e-government web site supportive for learners should be explored. This study is, to our knowledge, the first to examine an e-government web site from a learner perspective. Furthermore, this investigation presents a framework that facilitates analyzing and improving e-government web sites.