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Soft Goods are "electronic goods" -- software, electronic music, manuscripts, information etc. Hard Goods are the physical goods like books, shirts, office supplies, steel etc. Obviously, several "goods" take intermediate forms -- e.g., when we purchase an airline ticket, an e-ticket is the softgood part of the transaction, the physical airline seat is clearly a hard good. B2B is the shortform for "Business-To-Business" and refers to the interactions between businesses, often across the supply chain. B2C refers to the transactions to the end consumer, typically over "electronic storefronts". The research efforts in this department are primarily focused on hard goods column, with a focus of both B2B and B2C. There are other efforts within IBM, and IBM Research, which deal with various aspects of softgoods, including storage (see IBM's digital library solutions), delivery (see Information Commerce, which uses IBM patented Cryptolope Technology) and impact of "information economy". Also, with our focus being in the middleware (process) space, we do not do active research in cryptographic theory, payment protocols and security in general, though we definitely apply it in our domain. For details on what research goes on in this space, see SET, e-check, minipay etc.
While Electronic Commerce in general has been restricted to the "trade" processes, several attempts are being made to include both the "pre-trade" and "post-trade" steps. We at Research take a more granular view, and use the following value chain. What this describes is the steps, both from the buyer side, as well as the seller side, and the interactions. A simple "buyer" view of EC then is to "discover" the product, "evaluate" it (possibly involving third party services such as consumer reports), "negotiate" on the terms and conditions with the seller, and when finally satisfied, order for it, pay, and then receive the product as well as (a possible) service and support. Of course, several loops are possible in this, including skipping of steps, and this is one aspect of mass customization (i.e. a change in process flow depending on the parties involved; we will describe other aspects of mass customization later on). The seller side has similar value chain, with several components directly interacting with the buyer's view of the world; a few interesting ones are "product research" and "market stimulation" which typically have no counterparts in the buyer side. Our focus, then, is to build components in these value chains, as well focus on the integration/interaction between the processes, including customization. Our eventual goal is to understand and provide software for the higher level EC processes. We are doing all of these, with a strong technological focus, but also by working with leading edge customers for requirements and validation. |
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