Petra Schubert

Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities

The idea of integrating users into a co-design process as part of a mass customization strategy is a promising approach for companies being forced to react to the growing individualization of demand. Compared to the rather huge amount of literature on manufacturing and information systems for mass customization, only little research discusses the role of the customer within the co-design process. Customers face new uncertainties and risks, coined “mass confusion” in this paper, when acting as co-designers. Building on a construction strategy of empirical management research in the form of six case studies, we propose the use of online communities for collaborative customer co-design in order to reduce the mass confusion phenomenon. In doing so, the paper challenges the assumption made by most mass customization researchers that offering customized products requires an individual (one-to-one) relationship between customer and supplier. The objective of the paper is to build and explore the idea of communities for customer co-design and transfer established knowledge on community support to this new area of application.

Virtual Communities of Transaction: The Role of Personalization in Electronic Commerce.

Bringing communities of buyers and sellers together in the arena of electronic commerce stimulates three major potentials: the building of trust, the collection and effective use of community knowledge and the economic impacts of accumulated buying power. In this context, we introduce the concept of Virtual Communities of Transaction and review important personalization approaches which we may utilize in their design: collaborative filtering, data mining, and techniques to optimize the user interface and the underlying product offerings. The key contributions of this paper are the elaboration of Virtual Communities, the presentation of a categorization scheme for different types of communities, the identification of classes of member profiles, and the innovative concept of community products. We conclude with the case of the Amazon.com Recommendation Center to illustrate key design ideas and discuss an evolutionary application, the Participatory Product Catalogue.

Web Assessment – A Model for the Evaluation And the Assessment of Successful Electronic Commerce Applications

Today many a Website features fancy graphics, well organized content, but rarely induces the visitor to come back on a regular basis (with exceptions of course). The electronic commerce revolution somepredicted experiences a setback due to a lack of consumer interest and some potential customers turn their screens off rather than meddling their way through a purchase order. But why are customers so indifferent? This paper addresses a largely unexplored issue: the analysis of supposedly interactive electronic commerce applications. The paper defines the theoretical framework of the Web Assessment Model. The model builds on the three transaction phases – information, agreement, and settlement – and parts of a product performance system. To embrace the notion of community – a central issue in virtual environments – a further phase is added, and media inherent criteria are derived. The paper closes by applying the model to the Web site of Swissair, the national airline of Switzerland.

Web assessment-measuring the effectiveness of electronic commerce sites going beyond traditional marketing paradigms

Successfully conducting business on the Internet calls for new marketing paradigms that meet the requirements of the unique combination of its inherent characteristics: electronic markets, technological platform, and marketing issues. In this context, electronic markets are the framework in which market transactions are performed on the Internet. Underlying Internet technology forces marketing activities to be different from the ones applied to traditional sales channels and performance marketing is the essential ingredient for creating the best offering for the customer. The Web Assessment model unites these constituting characteristics into one approach for the evaluation of commercial Web sites. Based upon the Web Assessment methodology a software tool was created in order to enable Web users to make an online evaluation of their favorite Web sites. The paper describes the underlying model and presents the first observations which could be made when using the tool. The findings outlined in this paper were collected from participating Internet users who completed the online questionnaire. The data is a collection of subjective user assessments of various Internet commerce applications. There are various kinds of observations which can be made with the Web Assessment tool.

Strategien für die digitale Wirtschaft

Nachdem die ersten beiden Kapitel dieses Buches vor allem der Einfuhrung dienten, soll auf den folgenden Seiten nun aufgezeigt werden, wie in der digitalen Wirtschaft eine Strategie definiert werden kann, mit der Unternehmen nachhaltige Wettbewerbsvorteile erreichen konnen.

Web assessment-a model for the evaluation and the assessment of successful electronic commerce applications

Today many a Website features fancy graphics, well organized content, but rarely induces the visitor to come back on a regular basis (with exceptions of course). The electronic commerce revolution experiences a setback due to a lack of consumer interest and some potential customers turn their screens off rather than meddling their way through a purchase order. But why are customers so indifferent? This paper addresses a largely unexplored issue: the analysis of supposedly interactive electronic commerce applications. The paper defines the theoretical framework of the Web Assessment Model. The model builds on the three transaction phases-information, agreement, and settlement-and parts of a product performance system to embrace the notion of community-a central issue in virtual environments-a further phase is added, and media inherent criteria are derived. The paper closes by applying the model to the Web site of Swissair, the national airline of Switzerland.

Extended Web Assessment Method (EWAM) - evaluation of e-commerce applications from the customer's viewpoint

The paper presents and applies the Extended Web Assessment Method (EWAM), an evaluation tool which has been specifically created for the assessment of e-commerce applications. EWAM builds on the Web Assessment Method developed at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland (P. Schubert and D. Selz, 2000) and integrates findings from the Technology Acceptance Model (F.D. Davis, 1985) and several alternative approaches. It defines an evaluation grid including a set of criteria to appraise the quality and success of existing e-commerce applications. The focus lies on consumer perspectives and the specific features of the Internet as a medium. Using the EWAM tool, an analysis of eight commercial Web sites in two different business sectors: consumer goods and e-banking, was performed. The findings show that according to the assessors, most of the Web sites assessed do still not fully meet user expectations. Consumer goods are a local business. Despite this possible disadvantage, they showed good performance in customer satisfaction. E-banking applications do not present differentiated features; one can seemingly be replaced by the other with no problem.

Current Trends and Challenges in Electronic Procurement: An Empirical Study

This paper presents results from a longitudinal study on the use of ICT for B2B-related business processes in large Swiss companies. In an empirical survey, 68 questionnaires were personally collected from procurement heads and subsequently analysed. The study was initiated by industry partners who wanted to gain more detailed knowledge about the maturity of e-procurement in the Swiss market. Based on an extensive literature review and previous empirical studies, we developed a research framework addressing strategic as well as operational issues. The findings show that reduction of purchase prices is the top priority when setting procurement goals. For 78.2% of the respondents IT makes an important contribution to successfully carrying out the procurement function. Nevertheless, these companies are striving for further optimization and improved process integration. Electronic exchange of invoices (e-invoicing) is a current key topic for over 70% of the companies. Procurement heads sense a lack of supplier involvement, which makes the realization of balanced B2B solution scenarios difficult. The study shows that IT, without doubt, plays a significant role in everyday procurement, but that the expectations of IT are rarely completely fulfilled.

B2B integration in global supply chains: An identification of technical integration scenarios

The competitiveness of businesses is increasingly dependent on their electronic networks with customers, suppliers, and partners. While the strategic and operational impact of external integration and IOS adoption has been extensively studied, much less attention has been paid to the organizational and technical design of electronic relationships. The objective of our longitudinal research project is the development of a framework for understanding and explaining B2B integration. Drawing on existing literature and empirical cases we present a reference model (a classification scheme for B2B Integration). The reference model comprises technical, organizational, and institutional levels to reflect the multiple facets of B2B integration. In this paper we investigate the current state of electronic collaboration in global supply chains focussing on the technical view. Using an in-depth case analysis we identify five integration scenarios. In the subsequent confirmatory phase of the research we analyse 112 real-world company cases to validate these five integration scenarios. Our research advances and deepens existing studies by developing a B2B reference model, which reflects the current state of practice and is independent of specific implementation technologies. In the next stage of the research the emerging reference model will be extended to create an assessment model for analysing the maturity level of a given company in a specific supply chain.

Importance and Use of Information Technology in Small and Medium-Sized Companies

The following paper presents results from a longitudinal study about the importance and use of information and communication technology (ICT) in Swiss small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). In an empirical survey, 989 questionnaires were collected and analysed (return rate 17%). The results were weighted according to company size and industry sector and are representative for Switzerland. The findings show that Swiss SMEs-in their self-assessment-manage to gain (competitive) advantages from the deployment of information and communication technology. ICT is universally used (even) in (small and medium-sized) companies. There is a high degree of inter-organizational ICT use. ICT know-how and awareness are strongly rooted in management. The general conclusion is that IT matters for Swiss SMEs.