EASY Shopping - A Value-Added Service for Electronic Malls

Petra Schumann

Bavarian Research Center for Knowledge-Based Systems (FORWISS)
Am Weichselgarten 7, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany
phone +49-9131-691-216, fax: +49-9131-691-185
email: schumann@forwiss.uni-erlangen.de

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ABSTRACT

With the commercialization of the Internet electronic shopping malls turned up in large numbers. Their initial purpose was to provide the necessary infrastructure for participating suppliers to open an online shop, and for consumers to facilitate the tracing of goods and services. Recent shutdowns of big electronic malls (e-malls) or press releases about unsatisfactory results in turnover, however, lead us to suppose that e-malls need some kind of added value. We propose a product advisory system for electronic malls that solves complex customer problems following the example of traditional system- or cross-selling. By automatically compiling bundles of products coming from different suppliers the Event Advisory System (EASY) can increase the benefits for the participating sellers as well as for the customers.

KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: electronic (shopping) mall, value-added service, online product advisory system, object systems, system selling, product bundling