| The purpose of the study was to develop a general model for cybermediaries to asses and identify potential success in electronic commerce age. It was believed that this model would contain the roles, responsibilities, and characteristics of successful cybermediaries in today's highly competitive global marketplace. Specifically, the research focused on the examination and analysis of cybermediaries such as Yahoo (search engine), Excite (search engine), Amazon.com (bookstore), Autobytel.com (auto dealer), and Priceline.com (airlines, hotel, and car rental). The objective was to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each, the method and approach used to generate revenue, and the complexity of the system that is required to be successful.;Cornerstone's Business Model to assess success factors of cybermediaries was synthesize from the literature. Researchers agreed with the characteristics, identification, concepts, and strategies of new business models and processes. Those that survive have been able to interrelate employees, customers, prospects, contractors, distributors, suppliers, government, and industry on the Internet side. They coordinate and interrelate corporate data, e-mail, orders, customer data, and inventory. The cornerstones of the model consist of cybermediary roles, characteristics, responsibilities, customer service systems, and intelligent interactivity systems. These represented the major variables of the study and related directly to the research questions.;From the results of the study it was determined that the roles of today's successful cybermediary must not be limited to assistance only in the area of information retrieval. Also cybermediaries must become heavily involved in technology development to improve efficiency of information markets, provide new technologies, and become the new knowledge brokers. They are responsible for providing validation and technology services, improving efficiency of information distribution, providing adequate information to support queries for specific decision making purposes, and supplying needed access, software support, servers, and promotional opportunities. With respect to characteristics, successful cybermediaries anticipate customer needs, focus on format and content of the site rather than the product itself, selectively route information from providers to consumers, and provide as much relevant information as possible.;It was also found that successful cybermediaries must have highly developed and focused customer service and intelligent systems. These systems must contain a quick experience to bring customers back and keep them from going to competitors; enough information to make informed price decisions; the ability to answer questions, take requests, and schedule shipments; provide sophisticated solutions to customer problems twenty-four hours a day; develop relationships with individual customers, differentiating one customer from the next and treating each one as separate; supply successful communications and respond to customer's needs/questions in a timely manner; provide live agent help when necessary on a twenty-four hour a day basis; monitor how customers use their support information; involve many different levels/sublevels of inquiry for back-and-forth dialogue and two-way communication; and contain a self-service model that provides on-line answers and products, contain archives of commonly encountered problems, contain resolution guides, and provide electronic mail interaction all day and all night. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
