Bill Anckar

Creating customer value in online grocery shopping

This paper argues that there are four different ways in which customer value can be created in electronic grocery shopping, but that the chosen business model will set limits to whether – and to what extent – the firm will be able to offer value‐adding services for consumers. The relationship between business models and customer value in online grocery shopping is exemplified, and some practical problems and opportunities in e‐grocering are highlighted by presenting the case of Nettimarket.com, a Finnish Internet grocery business that was founded by an entrepreneur with no previous experience of the industry. His company is a start‐up virtual grocery shop with a business model unattainable by the big industry players. The paper reports on the experiences of the company and the outlook of the entrepreneur after two and three years in business, respectively.

Introducing Web technology in a small peripheral hospitality organization.

The emergence of global electronic markets on the Internet has been seen as an opportunity for small and medium‐sized tourism enterprises to improve their competitive position. However, several barriers hinder small hospitality organizations from capitalizing on IT and the Internet. This paper reports on an action research program of introducing Internet technology in a small hotel located in a peripheral region of Finland. As part of a project funded by the European Union, a complete integrated Web booking and hotel management system was developed, denoting a re‐engineering of many business processes. The system, which features customer online (real‐time) reservation services was an inexpensive, user‐friendly solution specially designed for the purposes of small and medium‐sized hospitality organizations with little prior IT knowledge. In the field of online reservation systems, the hotel is a pioneer, as it is the first independent hotel in Finland to offer online reservation services through a non‐cust...

SELF-BOOKING OF HIGH- AND LOW-COMPLEXITY TRAVEL PRODUCTS: EXPLORATORY FINDINGS

With electronic markets emerging on the Internet, the travel agency has been characterized as the most endangered organization in the travel industry as potential travelers now have the opportunity to bypass intermediaries in the distribution chain. Customers are offered good opportunities for convenient and inexpensive travel bookings on the Internet, but at the same time they face many problems and limitations in this regard. This research empirically examines the issue of self-bookings in travel. It reports on a series of exploratory studies conducted in order to investigate the opportunities offered as well as the problems facing any consumer trying to make his own travel reservations over the Internet today, and especially the differences between high- and low-complexity bookings in this regard. Four hypotheses were uncovered that relate to the issue of the complexity of the booking task, all emanating from the intuitively realistic supposition that low-complexity travel arrangements are better suited for direct distribution over the Internet than high-complexity arrangements. Using reservation and survey data from samples of students, nearly all of which were experienced Internet users, little support was found for the hypothesized relationships.

Destination Maui? An Exploratory Assessment of the Efficacy of Self-Booking in Travel

The travel industry, one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world, appears particularly interesting in terms of the possibilities offered by electronic commerce. It is one of the industries where business is already conducted successfully on the Internet and where the importance of electronic commerce is likely to grow. In order to investigate the opportunities offered as well as the problems facing any consumer trying to make his/her own travel reservations on the Internet, an empirical study was conducted among students attending an intermediary level course on Electronic Commerce. The study was divided into two parts, consisting of (i) a quotation competition in which the students were to act as travel agents, submitting an offer for a journey according to some given specifications; and (ii) a measurement, in which the students who submitted offers were asked to report on their booking experiences, especially the problems they encountered during the task. Within the travel industry, t...

A Reassessment of the Efficacy of Self-Booking in Travel

A common prediction a decade ago was that the travel industry would become one of the first industries to experience disintermediation as Internet-based purchase and sales models arise. In 1998 we conducted an exploratory study, the aim of which was to investigate the opportunities involved in online travel reservations by consumers, and to identify — and assess the magnitude of — a number of potential problem areas in the Internet self-booking process. The study was repeated in 2005 in order to investigate whether the online booking services have improved and matured since 1998, and if greater prerequisites for successful e-commerce have been implemented as both service providers and customers have gained more experience with the new medium. The data collected in 2005 largely reinforced the findings from 1998, indicating that self-bookings still call for massive efforts in terms of the time spent online. Nevertheless, consumers seem to have fewer difficulties producing satisfactory travel arrangements online today than seven years ago.

Adoption drivers and intents in the mobile electronic marketplace: Survey findings

Although little is known about consumers’ attitudes towards wireless marketing channels and how customer value is generated in mobile commerce, many organizations are today making considerable investments to take advantage of the new business possibilities offered by wireless technologies ‐ encouraged by optimistic, yet contradictory forecasts on the future volume of mobile commerce. This paper reports on a national consumer survey conducted to investigate (i) the Finnish consumers’ willingness to use a number of initial mobile service, (ii) the common supposition that m‐commerce will be able to increase the overall market for e‐commerce by penetrating into untapped markets, and particularly (iii) if early and intended adoption of m‐commerce by consumers can be attributed to certain types of mobile services.

Outsourcing public sector services to electronic commerce players

In December 2000, the municipal social service department of the city of Turku, Finland, outsourced its open care grocery shopping to an online grocery retailer. Prior to the implementation of the online service, the open care employees had taken care of grocery shopping for all those customers who were not able to do it themselves. The city officials expected that an outside e-commerce player would among other things bring time savings so that the open care service would be able to focus on the hard core of open care - caring for the elderly and the disabled at home. This paper examines the expected and realised value from outsourcing from the viewpoint of the three main stakeholders: the customers, the employees and the management. The findings are based on employee and customer surveys as well as interviews with the open care management.