A Cooperative Communicative Intelligent Agent Model for E-Commerce

The complexities of business continue to expand. First technology, then the World Wide Web, ubiquitous commerce, mobile commerce, and who knows. Business information systems need to be able to adjust to these increased complexities, while not creating more problems. Here, we put forth a conceptual model for cooperative communicative intelligent agents that can extend itself to the logical constructs needed by modern business operations today and tomorrow.

An Evaluation of Dynamic Electronic Catalog Models in Relational Database Systems

Electronic catalogs are electronic representations about products and services in the electronic commerce environment and require diverse and flexible schemas. Although relational database systems seem to be an obvious choice for their storage, traditional designs of relational schemas do not support electronic catalogs in the most effective ways. Therefore, new models for managing diverse and flexible schemas in relational databases are required for such systems. Proposed in this paper are several models for electronic catalogs using relational tables, and an experimental evaluation of their efficiency. The results of this study can be put to practical use and are, in fact, being applied in the design of a commercial software product.

M-Commerce

Mobile Commerce (m-commerce) has been defined as a process of conducting commercial transactions via “mobile” telecommunications networks using a communication, information, and payment devices such as a mobile phone or a palmtop unit. Here, we analyze the potential ramifications in the field of marketing and changes in the market due to the advent of m-commerce. In particular, we analyze the opportunities that various characteristics of the m-commerce model can bring to the field of marketing. We investigate the likelihood of the emergence of mall-like zones that are based both on the geographical proximity of services and goods providers and the use of mobile communication devices. Such zones have a potential for becoming the basic units for any analysis of m-commerce scenarios. As m-commerce attains maturity, the zones could become the fundamental parameter in marketing evaluation.

E-Business Experiences with Online Auctions

Online auctions are among the most influential e-business applications. Their impact on trading for businesses, as well as consumers, is both remarkable and inevitable. There have been considerable efforts in setting up market places, but, with respects to market volume, online trading is still in its early stages. This chapter discusses the benefits of the concept of Internet marketplaces, with the highest impact on pricing strategies, namely, the conduction of online business auctions. We discuss their benefits, problems and possible solutions. In addition, we sketch actions for suppliers to achieve a better strategic position in the upcoming Internet market places.

A Concept for the Evaluation of E-Commerce-Ability

This chapter develops a concept to evaluate the e-commerce-ability of a corporation and applies the framework to basic roles of the e-commerce environment. The concept comprises two components. A four-dimensional framework is proposed which can be used to represent the degree of external coordination; the degree of alignment of business toward organizational and cultural rules of the networked economy; the degree of orientation toward customer needs; and the degree of systematic and integral use of information and communication technology (ICT). Based on this framework, an evaluation approach is presented that supports a maturity analysis.

An E-Channel Development Framework for Hybrid E-Retailers

Due to the profound impact of e-commerce on organizations, e-channel development emerged as one of the most important challenges that managers face. Unfortunately, studies indicate that managers in most large companies are still unclear about an e-commerce strategy, and tend to lack adequate e-commerce development expertise. Poorly planned and developed e-commerce channels add little value to organizations. Furthermore, these poorly developed e-channels may even have negative impact on their organizations by confusing and disappointing customers who value a seamless cross-channel experience. To develop an e-channel that delivers higher utility to customers and generates sustainable long-term profits, managers need to analyze how an e-commerce channel affects the performance of existing channels and develop a company-wide e-channel development program. Based on a number of e-commerce case studies, we developed an e-channel development framework that consists of five step-by-step phases: (1) strategic analysis; (2) e-channel planning; (3) e-channel system design; (4) e-channel system development; and (5) performance evaluation and refinement. This framework helps managers evaluate the impact of e-commerce channels on organizational performance and determine the most appropriate channel design and integration mechanisms for the achievement of business strategies. This paper also discusses impact of e-channel structures on organizational performance.

Potential Roles for Business-to-Business Marketplace Providers in Service-Oriented Architectures

The chapter introduces the concept of a service-oriented architecture and assesses its applicability to business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces. In order to provide substantial value to their members, marketplaces have to offer a comprehensive service offering which aims to support all phases of the transaction process. Building up such a service offering is not a one-time effort; electronic B2B marketplaces will have to evolve their service offerings continually and adapt them to the ever-changing needs of the companies they serve. Therefore, instead of trying to create such an extensive service offering on their own, we argue that B2B marketplaces have to make use of partnerships with specialized service providers.

Strategic Issues in Implementing Electronic-ID Services

During the past few years, e-security solutions (e.g., digital certificates, e-signatures, e-IDs) gained tremendous attention as they promised to plug security loopholes and create trusted electronic markets. Implementation of such critical, complex and costly security solutions demands thorough assessment at technical, as well as business levels. Based on the author’s experience at one of Scandinavia’s leading vendors of banking solutions and infrastructure, the paper develops basic concepts, discusses strategic (product, market and technical) concerns and, finally, summarizes the contemporary challenges facing the implementation of e-ID schemes.

Factors Influencing Users' Adoption of Mobile Computing

This chapter introduces a model that identifies factors influencing users’ adoption of mobile computing. It extends the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by identifying system and user characteristics that affect the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of mobile computing, which are two key antecedents in TAM. Furthermore, it incorporates two additional constructs, trust and enjoyment, as determinants in the model, and proposes specific factors that influence these two constructs. The long-term goals of this work are to gain an increased understanding of adoption issues in mobile computing, and to explain how specific HCI design issues may affect adoption by users.

Supporting Mobility and Negotiation in Agent-Based E-Commerce

This chapter presents recent advances in agent-based e-commerce, addressing the issues of mobility and negotiation. It reports on selected research efforts, focusing on developing intelligent agents for automating the e-commerce negotiation and coalition formation processes and mobile agents for supporting deployment of intelligent e-commerce agents and enabling mobile e-commerce applications. Issues such as trade-off between decision-making in negotiation and mobility capabilities of the agents are also discussed in this paper.