ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

An Electronic Commerce Case Study



An Electronic Commerce Case Study

Introduction

Recently, a wide range of technologies have given rise to e-commerce practices by assisting the formulation of new business models, such as e-shop, e-mall, e-auction, e-procurement, e-marketplace, e-communities, e-brokers and other commerce support e-intermediaries, which increasingly catalyze information-based industries. In the majority of the cases, the distinction between these new virtualities is drawn around functional rather than technological characteristics. Moreover, although frequently non homogeneous and seemingly different, these efforts establish a new context for electronic commerce and practice as they implicate a variety of issues, such as global marketing, 24/7 operations, quick responses, competitive pricing, interactive search and navigation facilities, personalized and customized services, push and pull marketing mechanisms, etc. Inevitably, the travel and tourism industries have also faced new challenges that pushed them to adopt more innovative internet based strategies and technologies.

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate a design case in which collective intelligence of a boundary spanning alliance of regional tourism service providers is codified to support distributed collective practices for assembling families of vacation packages for tourists. This is achieved by elaborating on a case study conducted recently in the frame of a collaborative R&D project. The project is currently in its pilot phase where basic concepts have been formed and evaluated and an operational system is available (http://www.e-kones.teiher.gr/). The approach followed to build the system is rooted in the design science paradigm for information systems research. The underlying premise is to provide a novel virtual practice of vacation package assembly fostering virtualization of the operations of boundary spanning alliances. It turns out that the innovative character of the products assembled through this practice is due not only to the way in which they are compiled (i.e., factory-based assembly line), but also to their plasticity which allows them to exhibit both locality and boundary function.

Theoretical Development

The present work explores innovative information-based product development by a cross-organization virtual tourism alliance. The design of the alliance and the process through which new vacation packages are assembled is a representative case of distributed collective practicing. The theoretical footings of the work build on two prominent concepts, namely virtual communities of practice and innovation management in community settings. The former brings to the forefront long-standing debates on what are communities of practice, the intrinsic of their function online, as well as the more recent issue of appropriating suitable information infrastructures and tools. The latter, is a more recent challenge approached mainly my management scholars interested in the fabrics of knowledge management and user driven innovation in community settings. This section attempts a brief but representative review of these two concepts to set the focus of the present research and motivate the subsequent discussion on innovative information-based product development in cross-organizational virtual communities of practice.

In the original formulation of the concept, communities of practice (CoP) were introduced as a practice-oriented theory of learning. In subsequent efforts, the focus increasingly shifts from learning to social construction of knowledge and knowledge ...