Real-time remote sales assistance is an underdeveloped component of online sales services. Solutions involving web page text chat, telephony and video support prove problematic when seeking to remotely guide customers in their sales processes, especially with configurations of physically complex artefacts. Recently, there has been great interest in the application of virtual worlds and augmente...

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Product/Service Systems have recently grown in manufacturers’ interest. This paper presents an international survey of manufacturers from Sweden, Japan, Italy and Germany. The results show that customer connection and demands along with increased competition were main driving forces for product/service systems. Also, most product/service systems include physical products, maintenance and repair...

In this paper we describe the knowledge-based recommender application FSAdvisor (Financial Services Advisor) which assists sales representatives in determining personalized financial service portfolios for their customers. Commercially introduced in 2003, FSAdvisor is licensed to a number of major financial service providers in Austria. It supports the dialog between a sales representative and ...

After sales service is a major source of competitive advantage for the firms in current business environment. The quality of the service depends on a number of factors among which availability of spare parts at the service centers is the most critical. It is very difficult to maintain the desired inventory of spare parts due to the increasing product complexity and variety. The variation in dem...

Drawing on the past literature on four retail service areas: content management, customer management, multi-channel management, and visitor traffic management, this research offers an empirical analysis of the relationships between these four service areas and the online sales performance of Web retailers. Using data from an independent source on the profiles as well as operational and sales pe...

BY ARTHUR R. ROSEN AND LEAH ROBINSON E ven though it looks like a service, walks like a service, and quacks like a service, cloud computing is probably—in the eyes of some state tax administrators—a taxable license to use pre-written computer software. At least that is the disturbing multistate trend that appears to have been initiated by a steady stream of New York sales and use tax advisory o...