Towards a Consumer Preference-based Taxonomy for Information Systems Development

A fundamental problem in many disciplines is the classification of objects within a domain of interest. This struggle is willingly undertaken to accrue the benefits of a shared vocabulary, with the concomitant reduction in complexity allowing for easier study of complex domains. Taxonomies are one such type of controlled vocabulary, and their development within information systems has moved from the ad hoc towards more standardized methods. However, the consumer preferences that catalyze and drive the development of many such systems have been little explored within information science research. This study presents a solution for this deficiency: a taxonomy structure of consumer preferences, based on extendible concepts derived from economic theory, marketing and psychology, and developed extending a known/generic taxonomy development method. A use case from the higher education domain—a platform for online education—has been used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed solution.