Abstract
The present chapter associates the basic model of an information intermediary discussed in Chapter 4 with real-life concepts and applications as well as their technological realization. The basic model treated the business of information intermediaries on a rather abstract level and focused the fundamental function of information acquisition on behalf of other economic agents’ information needs, i.e., the search for information or objects on behalf of a client (Figure 10 in Section 4.1.1).750 This basic function is a common foundation of a broad class of real-life information intermediaries, for example, market research agencies,751 rating agencies in financial markets,752 news agencies, and information brokers.753 The essential characteristic of all these enterprises in the market for information is that they conceive information as an economic commodity754 and process information on behalf of their clients’ information needs (Section 2.5.3). According to Definition 3 information intermediaries perform information processing activities and provide value-adding services that go beyond the basic function analyzed in the model. These activities and services will be discussed in Section 5.1.
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References
The process of information mediation is initiated by the recipient of the information, i.e., the information seeker directs the information intermediary to search for specific information (pull of information). The other case (push of information), i.e., the information source directs the information intermediary to disseminate information to specific recipients, is not addressed by the model. See Section 4.1.2.
Cf. [Knoblich 85, p. 571–573].
Cf. [Büschgen 91, p. 579–580].
Cf. [Knoblich 85, p. 570–573].
This does not necessarily mean that the services are always performed for a fee charged from the client. However, it should indicate that the fundamental function of these enterprises lies on the mediation of information and not on the production of new knowledge.
Cf. [Resnick 95], [Sarkar 96], [Bailey 97], [Whinston 97, 270–280].
Cf. [Harrington 96].
Cf. [Gebauer 96, p. 34–47].
‘Electronic Commerce denotes any form of economic activity conducted via electronic connections,’ cf. [Wigand 97, p. 260]. An Electronic Market (EM) is therefore one particular form of coordination within Electronic Commerce, this will not be discussed in detail, see [Picot 96, p. 331–341], [Kalakota 96], [Merz 96], [Wigand 97, p. 259–309], [Whinston 97, p. 1–57] for a review.
For information and references about virtual organizations (VOs) see http://www.virtual-organization.net.
Cf. [Bailey 97], [Bakos 91a], [Sarkar 96], [Bakos 97b]. Sarkar designated these intermediaries as cybermediaries, cf. [Sarkar 96].
Fikes applied the term network-based information brokers to technologies and services that enable vendors and buyers to retrieve ‘information about services and products via the Internet from multiple vendor catalogs and data bases for both human and computer-based clients,’ cf. [Fikes 95].
Cf. [Fikes 95], [Whinston 97, p. 294–304].
The density of relevant information in the information available (see Sections 4.3.1.1 and 4.4.2) expresses a comparable situation from the viewpoint of a particular problem or question under consideration. See Section 1.1 as well.
These causes broadly correspond to two of the main foundations of information intermediaries, see Section 4.8.2.
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 259–260]. Kuhlen does not distinguish between reasons concerning the amount and those concerning the domain of information. See [Zelewski 87, p. 738], and [Birchall 94] as well.
Cf. Section 2.1.3.
For example, an online-database requires the searcher’s ability to formulate queries.
According to the theory of the Anomalous State of Knowledge (ASK), users can easier specify the anomaly in their personal state of knowledge than formulate a request to an information retrieval system, cf. [Belkin 82].
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 344 fp.], [Picot 96, p. 106 fp.], [Wigand 97, p. 88 fp.].
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 346–347].
Langhein claimed that information intermediaries should aim to conceive themselves as providers of problem solutions, because information itself is usually an aid in the solution of problems, cf. [Langhein 85, p. 235–263].
Cf. [Grudowski 97, p. 826].
See Sections 4.8.2 and 4.4.2.3.
Technology transfer, cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 338–339].
Cf. [Schmidt 92, p. 95].
For the distinction of technological information and market information see Section 2.1.1.3.
Cf. [Knoblich 85, p. 566–573].
For a characterization of added values obtained from information processing see [Kuhlen 95, p. 86–94].
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 259–266], see Section 2.1.2 as well.
Of course, a scientific paper itself is a representation of knowledge, because it is the result of information processing done by the author, cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 86]. This implies that the processes of intellectual and automated analysis indicated in Figure 50 can take place on multiple levels, however, the focus of the framework lies on the activities indicated in the text.
For abstracting see [Kuhlen 95, p. 86–87], [Kuhlen 97].
See Section 2.1.3.
For the application of information retrieval systems in the organization of knowledge and information see [Kuhlen 95, p. 257–286].
For expert systems as information intermediaries see [Drenth 91].
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 266].
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 263, 279–280].
For information brokers see [Kaminsky 81], [Zelewski 87], [O’Leary 87], and Section 5.1.4.
See Section 4.4.2.3.
Cf. Section 4.8.2.
See [Bode 93, p. 101–111], [Kuhlen 95, p. 82–94], [Alter 96, p. 365] as well.
For online available information sources see [Kuhlen 95, p. 267–331]. For examples of online-databases see [Staud 93] and for a review see [Staud 97].
The quality level provided by the information sources and the costs charged for the information are considered in the basic model of an information intermediary as the parameters X and c, respectively (Sections 4.3.1.1 and 4.3.2.2).
Cf. [Schmidt 97, p. 441].
Cf. [Rowley 92, p. 335–337].
Cf. Section 2.1.3.
Cf. [Drenth 91, p. 125–128].
Information is relevant for the information problem if it is new for the searcher, and if it allows to take conclusions that would be impossible without the information, cf. Sections 2.1.1.3, 2.1.1.4, and [Picot 96, p. 71 fp.].
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 84].
Cf. [Rowley 92, p. 14–15], [Kuhlen 95, p. 104–105, 262].
Cf. [Rowley 92, p. 3–18], [Kuhlen 95, p. 481–487], [Lynch 97], [Jeusfeld 97, p. 493–494] and Section 5.3.5.
Cf. [Schmidt 92, p. 40–42], [Kuhlen 95, p. 351–353], [Schmidt 97, p. 441–442].
Cf. [Nink 91, p. 132 fp.], [Kuhlen 95, p. 352].
Cf. [Kuhlen 94].
See [Schmidt 92, p. 35] and [Alter 96, p. 365] as well.
For learning processes see, for example, [Forsyth 86].
Cf. Section 2.1.2.
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p.88–90].
Cf. [Alter 96, p. 176–177].
Cf. Section 2.5.5.
Cf. [Kaminsky 81], [Kaminsky 83], [Kaminsky 89], [OLeary 87], [Zelewski 87], [Klems 94], [Finke 97]. An information broker can be defined as ‘an individual or organization who — on demand — seeks to answer questions using all sources available and who is in business for a profit,’ cf. [Lunin 76] according to [Warner 95]. See [Levine 95] for a brief history of the business of information brokers.
Cf. [Zelewski 87, p. 739–741].
Cf. [Bessler 85, p. 170].
These activities can be labeled as information refinement [Taylor 86] or condensation of information [Schmidt 92, p. 40–42].
Cf. [Bessler 85, p. 171]. The search for information on behalf of a single user has also implications for the business of the information broker, see Section 4.4.4.3.
Cf. [O’Leary 87, p. 26–28]. See Section 4.4.1.3 as well.
See [Zelewski 87, p. 741] for a comprehensive treatment.
Cf. [Zelewski 87, p. 741] and [Kuhlen 95, p. 347–348].
Cf. [Schmidt 92, p. 36–38].
Cf. [Biglaiser 93], Section 3.2.3.2, and Section 4.8.2.
See Section 4.4.2, [Zelewski 87, p. 742–743], and [Drenth 91, p. 128–129].
The information broker’s information processing is at least synthetic (Section 5.1.3.3), which implies that usually multiple information items have to be searched. In the terms of the basic model of an information intermediary this would require multiple search processes or the description of information items by a vector of attributes, cf. Section 4.2.1.
Cf. Section 4.3.2.
In most cases no exact knowledge about the distribution of attributes will be available or even possible. In these cases the intermediary has to estimate the stopping rule for the search process from past experiences, cf. Section 4.2.1.
Monitoring refers to the control of a set of information sources with regard to a particular information. Whereas, Scanning is the non-directed search for information that might be relevant for a particular topic. Cf. [Zelewski 87, p. 740].
Cf. [Bessler 85, p. 172], [Knoblich 85, p. 571], [Zelewski 87, p. 740], [Kuhlen 95, p. 380]. These services are labeled as current-awareness services, cf. [Nink 91, p. 81] and [Rowley 92, p. 13–14].
SADT stands for Structured Analysis and Design Technique, cf. [Heinrich 94, p. 107 fp.], [Stahlknecht 97, p. 295 fp.].
Cf. [Zelewski 87, p. 744].
Cf. Section 4.3.2.3.
Cf. Section 2.1.5.
Cf. Section 2.3.
Cf. Section 3.3.2.
Some arguments are taken from [Kuhlen 95, p. 353 fp.]. See [Nink 91, p. 99 fp.] as well. The critical success factors of information intermediaries summarized in Section 4.8.2 apply to information brokers as well.
Cf. [Weitzel 87] according to [Kuhlen 95, p. 354].
Cf. Sections 4.4.2.3 and 4.4.3.3.
Cf. [Kuhlen 95, p. 390 fp.].
Cf. [Denning 94, p. 134–135].
According to Nink information brokerage is a combination of the transfer of information and consulting, cf. [Nink 91, p. 7]. See [Kuhlen 95, p. 347] as well.
Cf. [Bull 87], [Yavas 94], [Gehrig 96], [Spulber 96a].
Cf. [Coym95].
In Germany this kind of institution is known as Stiftung Warentest (http://www.stiftung-warentest.de).
Electronic Markets and Electronic Commerce are discussed in: [Malone 87a], [Malone 87c], [Bakos 91a], [Bakos 91b], [Schmid 93], [Benjamin 95], [Kuhlen 95, p. 73–80], [Kalakota 96], [Zbornik 96], [Wigand 96], [Hoffman 96], [Whinston 97].
For the information technologies and concepts involved in these networks see [Picot 96, p. 115–195], [Kalakota 96], [Zbornik 96].
The Internet cannot be put on a level with the WWW, however, services like Gopher [Kuhlen 95, p. 467–471] and WAIS [Kuhlen 95, p. 464–467] have lost significance with the emergence of the WWW [Kuhlen 95, p. 471–487], [Berners-Lee 92], see [Whinston 97, p. 12].
Cf. [Malone 87a], [Benjamin 90].
Cf. [Malone 87a, p. 488].
Cf. [Resnick 95], [Sarkar 96], [Bailey 97].
Cf. [Malone 87a, p. 488]. These effects were already discussed afunctional sources of transaction cost reductions through intermediation (Section 3.2.3.2). See the basic model of information intermediaries as well (especially Sections 4.3.2.1 and 4.3.2.3).
Cf. [Resnick 95, p. 290], [Bakos 97b], and Section 3.2.3.2.
Cf. [Whinston 97, p. 158–168], and Section 3.2.3.2.
Cf. [Whinston 97, p. 152–162], [Bailey 97].
Cf. [Whinston 97, p. 168, 325–328], and Sections 4.8.2 and 5.3.1. The provision of personalized information products also addresses the problem of unauthorized reproduction and distribution of products by consumers, cf. [Whinston 97, p. 325].
Cf. [Resnick 95, p. 290].
Cf. [Ravindran 94], [Benjamin 95], [Steinfeld 96].
The change of industrial structure through electronic networks and electronic commerce is comprehensively discussed in literature. See, for example, [Benjamin 95], [Picot 96], [Sarkar 96], [Whinston 97, p. 45–46].
See, for example, survival strategies for intermediaries in the book business value chain in [Brenner 97].
Cf. [Bakos 91a, p. 307].
Cf. [Bakos 91a, p. 307].
Following the conception of external and internal transaction costs (Section 3.2.2.2), transactions can be characterized as external transactions, i.e., transactions in a market context, and internal transactions, i.e., transactions within an organizational context.
According to Nissen s integrated commerce model Electronic Commerce is a sequence of transfers and exchanges, cf. [Nissen 96].
Other flows involved in market transactions are the flows of money, goods, title flows, and promotion flows, cf. [Kotler 88, p. 531].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 134].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 138 fp.]. See [Beam 96b] and [Nissen 96] as well.
For further treatment of matching activities of intermediaries see [von Ungern-Stern-berg 84], [Gehrig 93], [Yavas 94], [Yavas 96], and Section 4.1.2.
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 116fp.].
Cf. [Malone 87a, p. 486–487].
For example, a product can be semi-formally described by a given set of product attributes and the medium can be a HTML document or an XML/EDI document ([Peat 97], http://www.xmledi.net).
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 120].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 71–74], [Buxmann 96a].
Cf. [Lee 96, p. 143–144].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 143–147].
Cf. [Kotler 88, p. 690]. For an overview of electronic negotiations see [Beam 96b], [Beam 97].
Cf. [Meyer 90, p. 147 fp.], [Gebauer 96, p. 17].
Contracting with two market sides is a fundamental activity of ‘traditional intermediaries,’ cf. Section 3.3.
See [Beam 96a] for Internet-based auctions and [McAfee 87] for auctions in general.
Cf. [Resnick 95, p. 290].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 154].
CyberCash (http://www.cybercash.com) is an example of a credit-card based payment system on the Internet. The Ecash system developed by DigiCash (http://www.digicash.com) is an example of a coin-based electronic payment system. For an overview of electronic payment systems see [Kalakota 96, p. 295–331], [Wayner 96], [Cerqueiro 96], [Whinston 97, p. 407–462], [Brown 97].
Cf. [Alt 95], [Zbornik 96, p. 154].
Logistics services, for example, provide the opportunity and the technological infrastructure to provide feedback about the delivery status of the freight, for example, the United Parcel Service (http://www.ups.com) and Federal Express (http://www.fedex. com).
Cf. [Hünerberg 96, p. 135], [Beam 96b].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 145–162].
Cf. [Segev 95], [Jiang 96], [Handschuh 97], [Schmid 97]. Other labels are Mediating Electronic Product Catalog [Handschuh 97] or simply Electronic Catalog [Segev 95].
Cf. [Zimmermann 97].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 123–130].
Cf. Definition 2 (Section 3.1.3), and [Zbornik 96, p. 124].
Cf. [Bakos91b].
An example can be observed in Andersen Consulting’s Bargain Finder (http://bf.cstar.ac.com/bf), an intelligent agent searching CD-stores for the cheapest offer. The system enforces price competition between suppliers, as a consequence, most CD-stores lock out the agent from their online available storefronts, cf. [Bailey 97].
Cf. [Zimmermann 97].
The Java Repository focuses the support of the information phase and the execution phase. For further information see [Buxmann 96b], [Buxmann 97a], [Buxmann 97b], [Buxmann 97c].
Cf. [Gosling 95] and http://java.sun.com.
A comparable intermediary for C++ software components is the REGINA Component Information System (http://www.findcomponents.com).
The aim of the Java Repository is to support the reuse of software elements over the Internet and so to increase the productivity of software development, cf. [Buxmann 97c].
Cf. [Buxmann 97a, p. 1429–1432]. For Ecash see [Kalakota 96, p. 299–310], and the DigiCash web site http://www.digicash.com.
Cf. [Bhargava 95a], [Bhargava 95b], [Bhargava 95c].
Cf. [Bakos 91b], [Szyperski 93], [Rayport 96], [Nouwens 96], see Section 3.2.2.3 as well. A variety of examples is discussed in [Boddy 96].
Cf. [Szyperski 93, p. 199–201], [Introna 97].
Cf. [Hirschmann 97].
Cf. Section 2.3.2. See [Froomkin 96], [Reagle 97] as well.
See [Lizzeri 96] for a treatment of economic aspects of certification intermediaries, i.e., intermediaries that search out information of privately informed parties and reveal part of it to uninformed parties.
Cf. [Froomkin 96], [Cerny 97], [Nehl 97].
Cf. [Cerny 97, p. 616].
Cf. [Zbornik 96, p. 147], [von Westarp 97].
Cf. [Malone 87b], [Goldberg 92], [Wiederhold 92].
Cf. [Resnick 95], [Sarkar 96].
See, for example, [Alter 96, p. 28].
Cf. Section 4.1.1, see [Sheth 94, p. 8], and [Whinston 97, p. 313] as well.
See, for example, [Foltz 92], [Loeb 92], and [Whinston 97, p. 327].
This refers to the quality of results obtained from an information retrieval or information filtering system, which can, on a technological basis, be expressed by the values of recall and precision, cf. Section 2.1.3. These measures neglect dimensions like credibility and style.
Cf. [Loeb92, p.41].
Cf. [Rowley 92, p. 15].
Cf. [Grauer 97, p. 39–50].
Cf. [Kuhlen 97].
Cf. Section 2.5. See [Whinston 97, p. 175–212] for aspects of copyright protection for electronic products.
Cf. [Knoblich 85, p. 564].
Cf. Section 5.1.3.1.
For quality characteristics concerning online-databases see [Kuhlen 95, p. 289–292].
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 30–33].
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 31, 37].
Cf. [Foltz 92, p. 52].
Cf. [Belkin 92] for an overview.
Cf. Section 5.3.3.1 and [Salton 83], [Belkin 92, p. 32–33], [Foltz 92].
Cf. [Maes94].
Cf. [Loeb92, p.41].
Cf. [Loeb 92, p. 41–42], [Belkin 92, p. 31–32].
See [Salton 83] for a comprehensive treatment of IR systems and [Kuhlen 95, p. 279–281] for basic models of information retrieval.
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 30], [Foltz 92, p. 52].
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 32], [Belkin 87].
Cf. [Salton 83].
See [Gauch 89], and [Smith 89, p. 250–252] for examples.
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 32–33].
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 32–33], see [Deerwester 90], and [Foltz 92] for Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), an extension of the basic vector model.
These are based on the Probability Ranking Principle, cf. [Robertson 77] according to [Belkin 92, p. 33].
A particular example is the inference net model, based on Bayesian inference networks, cf. [Belkin 92, p. 33].
See [Teuteberg 97], [Jeusfeld 97], [Lynch 97], [Whinston 97, p. 269–270], [Peterson 97], [Bekavac 96].
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 32], [Foltz 92, p. 52].
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 30–31].
However, recent commercial products have also addressed multimedia retrieval, cf. [Grauer 97, p. 70–82], [Croft 95].
Cf. [Belkin 92].
Cf. [Foltz 92, p. 53], [Belkin 92].
This classification of IF systems was based on a survey of information sharing in organizations, cf. [Malone 87b].
Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI), a method to match documents with the scientific interests of researchers, applies a user profile made up of keywords to select relevant articles, cf. [Foltz 92, p. 52]
Cf. [Malone 87b, p. 399].
Cf. [Resnick 95 p. 292–294], [Resnick 97 p. 56], a list of commercial collaborative filtering technologies can be found at http://sims.berkeley.edu/resources/collab /index.html.
Cf. [Goldberg 92, p. 61], [Maes 94, p. 39–40], [Resnick 94], [Konstan 97].
Explicit ratings for an item can be given in form of marks, cf. [Balabanovic 97], [Maes 94, p. 39–40], implicit ratings can be derived from user behavior, for example, the time a user spends reading a document, cf. [Konstan 97].
Cf. [Konstan 97].
Cf. [Shardanand 95], [Shardanand 94].
Cf. [Balabanovic 97].
Cf. [Belkin 92, p. 30].
Cf. [Maes 94, p. 40], [Balabanovic 97, p. 67].
Cf. [Maes 94, p. 39–40], [Shardanand 94].
Cf. [Resnick 94].
Cf. Section 4.3.1.
[Smith 89], and [Snute 93] label this knowledge as subject-dependent expertise. One effect of domain specific knowledge can be a reduction of the number of information sources to be taken into account in the search process, cf. [Jeusfeld 97, p. 498–499]. See Section 4.4.2 as well.
Cf. [Maes 94, p. 33].
Learning of user behavior by computer systems is the domain of artificial intelligence and especially applied in intelligent agent systems, cf. [Maes 94], [Mitchell 94], [Armstrong 95], [Lieberman 95], [Balabanovic 95], [Joachims 96], [Rhodes 96].
Cf. [Drenth91].
This technique is applied by the Meta-Search Engine SavvySearch (http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/) to gather information about the Search Engines queried, cf. [Howe 97].
Cf. Section 4.4.4.3.
Examples are PointCast (http://www.pointcast), and Netscape’s NetCaster (http:// www.netscape.com). These client/server applications require a permanent connection and therefore have to be implemented directly on basis of the TCP/IP protocol. The HTTP protocol is not appropriate because it is stateless, i.e., the connection between client and server is dropped after the server has responded the client’s request, cf. [December 95, p. 379], [Stevens 96].
Cf. [December 95].
Cf. [Berners-Lee 92], [Kuhlen 95, p. 427–430, 471].
Cf. [Herczeg 94, p. 135–138].
Directories, e.g., Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com), are the prototype of systems providing navigational access, whereas search engines, e.g., AltaVista (http://www. altavista.digital. com), provide the opportunity of database queries. However, hybrid forms exist as well, e.g., InfoSeek (http://www.infoseek.com).
Loeb describes a comparable architecture for a generalized filtering system, cf. [Loeb 92, p. 40].
Information gathering can be performed automatically by robots, cf. [Teuteberg 97, p. 374–376], [Koster 96] and http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html.
Subject directories have to be distinguished from distributed X.500 directory services providing user information as well as security and other information in LANs, cf. [Radicati 94].
The InterNIC (http://www.internic.net) operates and maintains a directory of directories (http://ds.internic.net/dod) providing references to other directory services.
Cf. [Peterson 97].
The user-specific information provided by the information intermediary offers a variety of opportunities for directed advertising. Advertisements can be related to a user’s profile or to the query entered. See [Hoffman 96] for an overview.
Cf. [Resnick 97, p. 58].
For example, the service of the DoctorDirectory is financed via ‘targeted health care specific and geographically sensitive interactive marketing,’ cf. ‘About Us’ on http://www.DoctorDirectory.com.
This was analyzed in the basic model of information intermediaries (Chapter 4), see Section 5.4.1.
For a discussion of Search Engines see [Peterson 97], [Teuteberg 97], [Jeusfeld 97]. A list of Internet Search Engines can be found at: http://www.sil.org/internet/guides.html. Besides WWW sites, some Search Engines focus FTP-sites or UseNet News.
Cf. [Koster 96], see http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html as well.
One main shortcoming of Internet Search Engines is the network traffic resulting from web robots; currently up to 20% of HTTP requests alone should result therefrom, cf. [Teuteberg 97, p. 375].
Cf. [Howe 97].
Tapestry, cf. [Goldberg 92].
GroupLens (http://www.cs.umn.edu/Research/GroupLens/), cf. [Resnick 94], [Konstan 97]. For a comparison of news filtering software see [Kilander 96].
Examples are FireFly (http://www.firefly.net), PHOAKS (http://www.phoaks.com) cf. [Terveen 97], FAB (http://fab.stanford.edu), cf. [Balabanovic 97]. A list of publicly available on-line recommendation systems can be found at http://fab.stanford.edu /papers/table, shtml.
Cf. [Resnick 97, p. 57].
Cf. [Avery 96], [Avery 97], and Section 2.5.1.
A major start-up problem is a low number of participants so that early users will not benefit from using the system, cf. [Maltz 95], [Avery 96].
Markets for evaluations are comprehensively discussed in [Avery 96].
Cf. [Resnick 97, p. 58].
Cf. [Lee 96, p. 137].
The basic possibilities of intermediary contracts were outlined in Section 3.3. These can be applied to network-based intermediaries supporting transactions in electronic markets as well.
Business models for information intermediaries have the aim ‘to generate revenues sufficient to cover’ the costs of operation, cf. [Resnick 97, p. 58]. The business models mentioned here cover intermediary services that provide assistance in the search for information, cf. Section 4.1.1.
Cf. Section 3.2.3.2, Table 6, and [Lizzeri 96].
Cf. Sections 2.3.3 and 3.4.1.
Cf. Section 5.3.5, and [Resnick 97, p. 58].
Cf. [Hoffman 96].
See the examples in Section 5.3.5, and [Resnick 97].
See Section 4.4.4.
Cf. [Buxmann 97a, p. 1430–1432], [Kalakota 96, p. 269–272].
See [Brown 97] for a brief review of micropayment systems. Examples for these systems are DigiCash’s Ecash (http://www.digicash.com), CyberCash’s CyberCoin (http://www.cybercash.com), and Digital’s Millicent (http://www.millicent.digital. com). See [Janson 95], [Kalakota 96, p. 295–331], [Pamirach 96], [Wayner 96], [Lynch 96], [Asokan 97] for electronic payment systems in general.
In the basic model the information seeker’s decision was based on the comparison of the quality-price combination offered by the intermediary with the expected result from a personal search process (Section 4.3.2.3). In a practical situation the information seeker will only make an estimation of the result obtainable from a personal search for information, cf. Section 4.2.1.
See the discussion of competition between information intermediaries, here especially Figure 44 and Section 4.5.2.2.
A different strategy for pricing digital information products is the bundling of different goods, cf. Section 2.5.4 and [Bakos 96]. 1001 See Section 2.5.4.
In ideal forms the information provided by the intermediary is focused on the information seekers’ individual information need (Sections 5.1.1 and 5.3.1), and therefore is usually of little use for other information seekers.
See Section 2.5.4, and [Varian 89, p. 640].
From an abstract point of view, these dimensions can be the timeliness, detail, response time of the service, cf. [Whinston 97, p. 326]. The treatment of the information intermediary within the basic model of an information intermediary as well as the characterization of the intermediary’s environment (Figure 55 in Section 5.3.2) allows a more precise determination of the measures to design the different service levels.
Best match IR technologies (Section 5.3.3.1), for example, offer the opportunity to vary the quality of the result obtained in a query.
Cf. [Porter 92, p. 26], see [Bloch 96] as well.
See the analysis of the supply market side (Section 4.4.2) and the target audience (Section 4.4.3) as well.
See [Benjamin 95] for the elimination of intermediaries (disintermediation) in the retail market.
The model of direct mediation of information in Section 5.1.2 gives the framework for these direct transactions in markets for information. See Section 4.3.2.3 for the ‘competition’ of the information intermediary with personal search processes of information seekers in the basic model of an information intermediary.
See Section 2.3.3, and see Section 3.2.3.2 for the functions of intermediaries.
Cf. [Maes 94], [Mitchell 94], [Balabanovic 95], [Lieberman 95], [Rhodes 96].
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© 1999 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg
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Rose, F. (1999). Concepts and design of information intermediaries. In: The Economics, Concept, and Design of Information Intermediaries. Information Age Economy. Physica-Verlag HD. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-99805-8_5
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