Innovation in Business Processes

Business to consumer electronic commerce will need better tools, beyond browsers and gadgets, for the user to take full advantage of the opportunities of the electronic marketplace. On the other side, business needs to rethink their positioning, and to deal with this new customer using new methods and tools. We present in this paper a tool for navigating large information spaces, such as the Web, using what is called here “rough guides”. The tool uses user preferences to perform adaptive guidance. Rough guides bring new interactions into the electronic commerce arena: how they are produced, sold, and updated using consumer’s feedback can be done in several and different ways than in a classic economic framework. Introduction The way people buy and sell is certainly changing with the advent of electronic marketplaces. Current information technology already has a strong influence both on before-sale and after-sale techniques and systems. These systems take the form of help desks, call centres, logistics and distribution systems, and strong enterprise alliances to outsource important client functions, from development to marketing. With some exceptions, namelly the UPS Tracking System (http://www.ups.com), none of them was developed with the internet in mind. These business support systems can be seen as a visible sign of the more than probable move to full electronic commerce. In effect, protocols like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or systems supporting government to citizen relationships (like the Portuguese Infocid platform) are already in place and have been used for several years. Financial institutions and banks have used for several years electronic transactions. This gives a true field to implement electronic commerce both between businesses and between government and citizens. Business to business electronic commerce is already on the move and several authors give figures that show its growing importance in the context of business to business relationships and in the global context of electronic commerce where it represents in a near future 80% of the value of transactions. In this paper, we will concentrate in the business to consumer electronic commerce, where there is still much to be developed and where a lot of research about use and development of new methods, tools and processes is still being devised. It seems that two key factors are essential to leverage business to consumer electronic commerce: tools to allow it, and consumer trust. Current tools, such as search engines, information warehouses, electronic mail and bulletin boards, do not scale well in a global market, and do not allow for shopping guidance. The user ends giving up either because of large waiting times, lots of information, lost pointers, or lack of confidence.