business art technology

The
Electronic Package
E-commerce hype&reality

Presentation, 21 October, 1999
by Richard Gatarski for

London, UK

[Slides] [Hardware]

Introduction

Presentation outline

The speaker Richard Gatarski:

• is a PhD student in business administration
• does research about:
  • Artificial Market Actors
  • Digital Content Management
  • Electronic Packaging

Outline

Today I (had the ambition) to talk about the following:

• E-commerce
• Artificial Market Actors
• Customer Conversation
• Post PC
• Conclusions

E-commerce

Big thing :-)

What I am addressing here is the emergence of a new retailing channel (electronic, interactive and online) as well as a new product type (digitial content).

It was not such a long time ago, that we had no packages!

Models of reality

This is a very simplified (for business managers :-) version of an academic model for markets.

How companies have gone Electronic

Many early Web sites was modelled with the aboriginal market idea, i.e. a place were people and products meet.

We looked at different contemporary E-tailers

• Safeway (UK)
• Liquor.com (US)
• Internet Wines & Spirits (US)
• Ready Store (Belgium)
• HomeGrocer (US, Amazon, Use ZIP 98109=Seattle)
• Drugstore.com (US, Amazon)

and totally different approaches

• Streamlines (US)
• 800Flowers.com (US)

Technology and Organizing

Once the roads are there (fibre) it is easy to set up a reatiling outlet.

The problem arrives when the traffic builds up, and consumers demans more and more...

Problems with business models

E-commerce is a special case when it comes to why people start that kind of businesses. For more information please check out my thoughts about this.

Succesful cases

I referred to the book and the site Customers.com

• Cisco
• American Airlines WWW
• National Semiconductor

Artificial Market Actors

Nicholas Negroponte, MIT media lab

"most people have a hard time understanding that the viewership of broadcast will be largely machines in the future, not people."

A few examples

• Excite Product Finder (crippled Jango)
• Linjeväljaren from Optimal Telecom.
• Olga from Centre for Speech Technology, KTH, Stockholm
• MarketMaker (former Kasbah) from MIT media lab
• Shallow Red from Neuromedia
• Toyspot demo from Netsage
• Generative desing from Emergent Design

See BotSpot for more examples of bots.

Customer Conversation

Here are but a few of the situations I presented.

See also Interactive Media face Artificial Consumers, and marketing theory must re-think published in Journal of Marketing Communications as well as in Marketing Communications Classics.

We see more and more examples of when people tell each other what they like and dislike. Sometimes companies have a hard time to follow what is being said and to be a part of the conversation.

When the pioneers mess things up:
CNET News.com - Members angry over Netscape forums shutdown

Post PC

In the future we will likely see more than Digital Television. It holds promises of intelligent appliances, wireless communication pads, personal digital assistants, multimedia cars, communicating toys, etc.
NCR Microwave oven communicator
WebMan from Anigma
WebPad from Cyrix
Advantage 2000 from CMI and Salton
Rocket eBook
Everybook
CrossPad from Cross
OnStar from GM
Actimates Barney from Microsoft.
Furby from Tiger Electronics

The future

Easy, create it!