SHOPAWARE: New methods of e-commerce - Virtual awareness and total customer care

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 99.0559

Key words (English)

E-commerce; security; anonymity; privacy; trust; virtual awareness; person-to-person communication

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: IST-1999-12361

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.2.2 New methods of work and electronic commerce

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
ETH Zürich
Institut für Technische Informatik und Kommunikationsnetze (TIK)

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Coordinator: Universität Ulm (D)

Abstract (English)

While today's e-commerce systems offer ample functionality to the potential and actual buyer who wants to browse an e-shop, (selection and description of offered goods, sales transaction support, web-based after-sales support), they offer little to users who have special needs or questions. Therefore, providing on-line, live communication (prior, during or after a sales transaction) between the agents of an e-shop and the customer is one important characteristic of future e-commerce systems. Such facilities will widen the range of goods that can be traded on-line from standard, simple-to-understand items, to items that can only be sold or supported with the involvement of human sales agents. The ShowAware project builds on emerging systems supporting business-to-customer e-commerce scenarios and aims at creating a comprehensive framework for live person-to-person communication usable in e-commerce systems. This framework should fulfil two main objectives:
· Increase trust by better security, privacy, transaction documentation and personal service, and by providing anonymity if required
· Increase customer satisfaction by creating a virtual presence environment and personal relationships built on person-to-person communication that is comparable in quality to the traditional retail business situation.
The main contributions of ETH Zurich were in the area of trust creation in the context of e-commerce scenarios. To improve trust in e-commerce, we were aiming at achieving a similar degree of anonymity customers experience in traditional stores in the on-line world. We have designed and implemented a system that allows users to access the e-store such that neither the e-shop's operator nor any external eavesdropper can find out who the customer actually is. In addition, we have designed a secure and pseudonymous credit card-based payment protocol that allows a user to pay goods without disclosing her identity. On the other hand, the payment protocol guarantees that the identity of an anonymous customer that tries to trick the customer can be unambiguously resolved. Using our components could greatly enhance trust in e-commerce since it overcomes the customers' privacy concerns.
While in the first project phase the focus was on the design of the anonymous payment protocol and the pseudonymity system, the main focus in the second phase was was on the implementation and functional evaluation of a prototype of the pseudonymity system. This system gained considerable international attention by means of several conference publications and a contribution to an international journal.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 99.0559