The Electronic Mall Bodensee - A Project Report

Hans-Dieter Zimmermann
Institute for Information Management, University of St. Gallen
Dufourstrasse 50, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland

 E-Mail: Hans-Dieter.Zimmermann@iwi.unisg.ch

Affiliation URL: http://www-iwi.unisg.ch

Personal URL: http://www-iwi.unisg.ch/about/team/hdz.html

Andreas Goeldi
Institute for Information Management, University of St. Gallen
Dufourstrasse 50, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland

 E-Mail: Andreas.Goeldi@iwi.unisg.ch

Personal URL: http://www-iwi.unisg.ch/about/team/ang.html

Keywords:: Electronic Mall, Electronic Commerce, Bodensee

The Idea of the Electronic Mall Bodensee

The ‘Electronic Mall Bodensee’ shall serve as a virtual forum for the businesses and the people mainly from the region around the Bodensee [1] [2].

All the districts bordering the Bodensee suffer from their geographic location at the edge of their countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). On the other side there is a specific cohesion between the people of the region.

The Goals of the Electronic Mall Bodensee

This new platform is intended to stimulate and accelerate the commercial activities and communication across the borders in the ‘Euregio Bodensee’. At the same time the Electronic Mall will link the region to the emerging ‘global village’. Hence the businesses of the region will have access to the global marketplace.

The basic goal of the project is to build a modern telematic infrastructure for commerce and communication primarily for the Euregio Bodensee. The Electronic Mall Bodensee will be implemented based on World Wide Web technology. A first prototype is planned for mid-1995. The results and elaborated concepts from the IWI competence centers ‘TeleCounter’ [SCH95] and ‘Electronic Markets’ [3] will be the basic building blocks for the Electronic Mall Bodensee.

The Basic Concept of the Electronic Mall Bodensee

Using the World Wide Web as an ‘electronic showroom’, the small and medium sized enterprises achieve a multi- and hypermedia presence in emerging electronic markets. Thus they are able to realize totally new potentialities of doing business, e.g. in the field of marketing. As part of a global infrastructure all the available Internet resources are accessible for them.

The ‘visible’ part of the Electronic Mall will be completed by an ‘invisible’ infrastructure of services. These services are generic and shall provide an infrastructure to enable the settlement of all parts of market transactions [4]. This enables private households and small businesses to be fully linked to the electronic data exchange chain using commercially available low-cost hardware and software components. The services are based on available and adequate telecommunication infrastructures, the ‘Data Highways’.

Conclusion

In this context the Electronic Mall Bodensee will usher the small and medium sized enterprises and the private households of the Euregio Bodensee to the domain of ubiquitous electronic markets and fulfill the demands of today’s information society.

Footnotes:

[1]: ‘Bodensee’ is the German word for the Lake of Constance, which is situated between Switzerland, Germany and Austria
[2]: The Electronic Mall Bodensee project is a common initiative of the cantonal department for industry, commerce and work (Kantonales Amt für Industrie, Gewerbe und Arbeit, KIGA), St. Gallen and the Institute for Information Management at the University of St. Gallen. It was started in January 1995. The project is actively supported by institutions and companies from all regions around Bodensee.
[3]: Most of the results and activities of the Competence Centers are availalbe on the Web server of the Institute for Information Management at the University of St. Gallen.
As soon as the the 'Electronic Mall Bodensee' is open to the public it will be linked to this server as well.
[4]: An example for such a service is the EDI-based settlement of payment transactions between private households or small businesses and banks. (See [SCH95])

Reference:

[SCH95]: Schmid, Beat (Hrsg.): Electronic Mall - Banking und Shopping in globalen Netzen. Teubner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1995