THE WALLACE E. CARROLL SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
MD850: Advanced Topics in IT: e-Service Operations
Spring 2002
MD850 Home
Week 4
The Service Product: Configurations of e-Service Attributes
Assigned Readings
Static vs. Dynamic (Real-Time) Service Products
Rust, R. T., and R. W. Oliver, “The Real-Time Service Product: Conquering Customer Time and Space (Chapter 3),” in New Service Development, J. A. Fitzsimmons and M. Fitzsimmons (eds.), Sage Publications, 2000. (handed out in class) (Please accept my apology. I forgot to hand this out. I'll summarize it in class.)
Data Mining of Service Product Attributes
Greening, D., “Data Mining on the Web: There’s Gold in that Mountain of Data,” WebTechniques, January 2000.
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/01/greening/
Greening, D., “Tracking Users: What Marketers Really Want to Know,” WebTechniques, July 1999.
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/1999/07/greening/
e-Service Application of Data Mining
Heim, G.R., and K.K. Sinha, “Product Configurations in Electronic Consumer Services”
PDF File
Word DOC File
Case Study Assignment
International Data Post Brings Snail Mail to the Internet Age with iPlanet (PDF File) (Sun J2EE Technology in Practice site)
Summary:
IDP developed a new type of mail service that substitutes for existing bulk mail services used by direct mailers. The service product is not a pure e-Service yet not a pure traditional service. The key technology for developing this new service product was e-Service technology based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition.
Case Questions:
(1) What are the substitute service products (traditional and e-Service) that the IDP's new service will need to compete against? What dimensions (quality? flexibility? etc.) differentiate between them? Using them, can you build a model like the service-product model presented in the Heim and Sinha paper?
(2) What are the important operational issues and challenges (for IDP, and for their fulfillment partners) in building this new service?
(3) Page 220 states "Since Web EPost is ... not just within the postal industry." One example provided of a similar e-service is in the context of a gas station. Can you envision other new e-Services that could be built upon the Web EPost technology platform?
(Please read the case above. Don't worry about doing the team exercise below, or about handing it in, since I was absent-minded in making sure that the required paper was on the site in time. We'll go through this exercise below in class.)
Team Web-Based Assignment
(1) [Apply the framework in the Heim and Sinha paper.] Visit the websites of the following companies: www.raisinrack.com, www.baltcoffee.com, www.travelocity.com, www.gemm.com, and www.autoweb.com and classify their e-products in one of the four categories of the e-product taxonomy: Niche Market, Market Extender, Dynamic Mass Market, and Customized Mega Market.
Submit a 1-2 page write-up justifying the rationale for your classification.
| Keyword Legend E-SERV = E-Service: 24 Ways to Keep Your Customers … CRM = CRM at the Speed of Light: Capturing and Keeping Customers … FUL = E-Commerce Logistics and Fulfillment: Delivering the Goods |
Related Readings: For Further Information
e-Service Attributes
Kotha, S., “A Note on Virtual Communities”
http://us.badm.washington.edu/kotha/internet/handouts/vc5.PDF
Statistical Analysis/Data Mining of e-Services
Spiller, P., and G. Lohse, “A Classification of Internet Retail Stores,”
International Journal of Electronic Commerce,2, 2, 1998.
acoirstores.pdf
Related Readings: Traditional (Person-to-Person) Services
Fitzsimmons & Fitzsimmons, Service Management: Operations,
Strategy, and Information Technology, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2001, Chapter
5 ("New Service Development and Process Design")
Haksever, et al., Service Management and Operations, Prentice Hall,
2000, Chapter 6 ("Positioning and Marketing of Services"),
Chapter 8 ("Design and Development of Services and Service Delivery
Systems")