Fundamental technologies for constructing the small-scale cyber shopping mall

In modern society, various commodities are produced to satisfy the desires of various consumers, and, as the characteristics and the desires of consumers are variant and active, the production systems are being transformed from small-item mass production systems to many-item small production systems. The consumers cannot acquire sufficient and satisfiable sales information about the commodities because of spatial and time constraints. To cope with these situations, it is necessary to construct cyber-shopping malls, enabling distant shopping via networks. We developed a prototype of a small-scale cyber-shopping mall that maximises the profits of both consumers and providers connected through networks. The effects of this research are: constructing a practical cyber-shopping mall based on the prototype, transferring the fundamental technologies of cyber-shopping mall constructions to small-scale enterprises, activating e-commerce by demonstrating the effects of cyber-shopping malls to consumers, giving recognition of low-cost marketing to the commodity-providers, and total solution development by combining data processing, data communication and information design technologies. The details of the research activities are: the basic design of a small-scale cyber-shopping mall; the detailed design of the user interface, database, application programs, network practices, security technologies and the customer service system; the prototype implementation of the small-scale cyber shopping mall; and the demonstration of the cyber-shopping mall.