Will the Net Turn Car Dealers into Dinosaurs? State Limits on Auto Sales Online

Many states have automobile franchise laws that impede or prohibit newcomers from entering the business of selling cars within certain local markets. The laws protect licensed local automobile dealers from certain types of competition; moreover, in many states those laws have the effect of prohibiting anyone except a licensed dealer from selling cars over the Internet. Defenders of the laws assert that they are necessary to protect consumers and dealers themselves. However, those laws harm consumers by impeding competition among sellers of cars. Several economic studies, including a study by the Federal Trade Commission, support that conclusion. In addition, state regulation of Internet commerce threatens to impede interstate commerce. The Constitution's commerce clause was intended to prevent states from erecting trade barriers that protect local businesses at the expense of national trade. The courts, therefore, will frown on states' trying to protect local dealers at the expense of consumers nationwide. The Internet is changing the traditional relationship among manufacturers, middlemen, and consumers. The middleman will not become extinct, but consumers will interact more with manufacturers, as often manufacturers are the best source of information about a product. Protectionist laws that make it harder to compete with traditional dealers harm consumers and will simply lead to stagnation. States should repeal laws that restrict online automobile sales before the Internet economy leaves their citizens behind

A Notation and Framework for Dialog Flow Control in Web Applications

The usability of web applications today often suffers from the page-based medium’s lack of intrinsic support for hierarchical dialog sequences mirroring the parent-child relationships between dialog boxes in window-based user interfaces. For multi-channel applications, an additional challenge lies in reconciling the device-independent business logic with the device-specific interaction patterns necessitated by different clients’ input/output capabilities.We therefore present a graphical Dialog Flow Notation that allows the specification of nestable dialog sequences for different presentation channels. These specifications serve as input for a Dialog Control Framework that controls the dialog flows of complex web applications

Spartan Daily, May 11, 2004

Volume 122, Issue 65https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9999/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, February 10, 1998

Volume 110, Issue 13https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9229/thumbnail.jp

Referral Infomediaries and Retail Competition

An important phenomenon on the Internet has been the emergence of "infomediaries" or Internet referral services such as Autobytel.com and Carpoint.com in the automobile industry, Avviva.com in real estate and Healthcareadvocates.com in medicine. These services offer consumers the opportunity to get price quotes from enrolled brick-and-mortar retailers as also information on invoice prices, reviews and specifications before they commence the shopping process. Internet referral services also direct consumer traffic to particular retailers who join them. The view of industry analysts and practitioners is that these services are a boon to consumers who can use them to get better prices from retailers. What is less clear though is the manner in which these infomediaries affect the market competition between retailers. In this paper, we analyze the impact of referral infomediaries on the functioning of retail markets and the contractual arrangements that they should use in selling their services. We identify the market conditions under which the business model represented by these services would be viable and also provide an understanding of how this institution would evolve with the growth of the Internet. The model that we develop captures the key economic characteristics that define an Internet referral infomediary. On the consumer side, a referral infomediary performs the function of "price discovery": a consumer can use the service to costlessly get an additional retail price quote before purchase. On the firm side, a referral service endows an enrolled retailer with the ability to price discriminate between consumers who come through the service and those who come directly to the store. Specifically the model consists of a referral infomediary and a market with two downstream retailers who compete in price. The retail market is comprised of three consumer segments: a segment loyal to each retailer and a comparison shopping segment that shops on the basis of the lowest price. The referral infomediary reaches some proportion of the total consumer population and this characterizes the reach of the Internet in this market. The impact of the infomediary on the market is best illustrated by the case in which one of the retailers is enrolled in the institution. We show that the referral price will always be lower than the retail store price offered by an enrolled dealer. The incentives of the retailer while setting the on-line referral price are driven not only by the comparison shoppers who search at both stores, but also the consumers who would have searched only at the competing store. Thus the use of a referral service as a price discrimination mechanism leads to lower online prices. Next, the profits of the enrolled dealer first increase and then decrease with the reach of the institution. One might find this surprising because the referral service provides the enrolled retailer the benefit of price discrimination as well as the benefit of additional demand (because the retailer gets the opportunity to quote a price to all online customers, some of whom were not previously accessible). However, the referral service also creates a competitive effect because it helps an enrolled retailer to poach on its competitor's customers who were previously unavailable. The strategic response by the competitor is to price aggressively in order to protect its loyal base and this intensifies price competition leading to lower equilibrium profits. This competitive effect increases with the reach of the infomediary. As a result, the profits of the enrolled retailer first increases and then decreases with the reach of the referral infomediary. We also show that the referral infomediary should prefer an exclusive strategy of allowing only one of the two retailers to enroll. A non-exclusive strategy implies that consumers who use the service will get referral prices from both retailers leading to Bertrand type competition for these consumers. Interestingly, we find that the referral service can unravel (in the sense that neither retailer can get any net profit from joining) when its reach becomes too large. In this case, any retailer that joins can poach upon a large proportion of its competitor's customers leading to intense price competition. Consequently, the joining firm will make less profits than if it had not joined. This provides a rationale for the current attempts by firms such as Autobytel to diversify aggressively into additional service areas. We extend the model to the case where the referral infomediary can identify the different consumer segments and show that consumer identification can prevent the infomediary from unraveling when the reach of the institution increases. Finally, we extend the model to the cases in which retailer loyalty is asymmetric and in which the reach of the Internet can vary across the different segments.Referral Services, Infomediaries, Internet, Price Discrimination, Retail Competition. ,

Towards Modeling of DataWeb Applications - A Requirement\u27s Perspective

The web is more and more used as a platform for fullfledged, increasingly complex information systems, where a huge amount of change-intensive data is managed by underlying database systems. From a software engineering point of view, the development of such so called DataWeb applications requires proper modeling methods in order to ensure architectural soundness and maintainability. The goal of this paper is twofold. First, a framework of requirements, covering the design space of DataWeb modeling methods in terms of three orthogonal dimensions is suggested. Second, on the basis of this framework, eight representative modeling methods for DataWeb applications are surveyed and general shortcomings are identified pointing the way to nextgeneration modeling methods

Sourcing and automation decisions in financial value chains

Online research maps are websites that present information about certain research activities in a structured manner. Institutions like universities, states, or individual researchers use them as knowledge base to identify and communicate “who knows what” and “where can the respective information be found”. Furthermore, these items are used as a research marketing measure, stressing the importance of this kind of portal. However, research maps differ in their range of functionalities, their respective naming, their target audience and so on. Thus, it is an exhausting task identifying and choosing the right set of functionalities. Our goal is to offer a template for the creation of common practice online research maps. For this purpose, we present a reference model and describe its development process. As preliminary measure, 66 research maps have been carefully analysed with respect to the formerly mentioned aspects. Derived from the results of our analysis, common practice was identified and used as basis for developing a reference model for online research maps. For development purposes, an existing language for describing internet portals was chosen and adapted to suite the requirements of describing research maps. The reference model presented in this article was then evaluated in a multi-methodical procedure

Web-based System Evolution in Model Driven Architecture

Abstract The complexity and size of commercial Web

Emergent Structures in the Information Economy

Electronic commerce is growing at a rapid, even bewildering pace. As we have no past experience from which to imagine commercial possibilities, it is hard to discern any constants except for that of continual change. In this research, we suggest that it may be possible to understand the directions of e-commerce by reasoning from the underlying functions that must be provided