Research Program

Unique Selling Proposition

The Institute for Management Information Systems focuses its research on management information systems for e-commerce in consumer goods markets (business to consumer). Our research is positioned at the interface of information systems research and business administration, especially marketing.

We engage in research on information systems for product, price, communication and distribution policy in e-commerce, management support systems (MSS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and spanning tools and methods. Our approach also encompasses the integration of all these research issues.

Research Objectives

In course of our research we want to:
 

 

Overview of Our Research Areas

 

Product Policy

As the Internet is a digital communication medium, it allows a number of additional opportunities to optimize product policy. This is related to single products as well as product assortments. Web-shops are not restricted to a limited sales space, so they can extend their range of products. Furthermore, firms have more potential to individualize and personalize their product offerings. Two important tools are recommender systems and virtual communities. Online branding is an upcoming challenge in e-commerce that requires further attention.

 

Price Policy

Price policy can use several typical attributes of the Internet as a sales channel. Relevant research areas cover application of fixed catalog prices versus dynamic pricing such as auctions or customer-driven pricing, pricing strategies for digital goods (e.g. “follow the free pricing”), price differentiation, and price bundling. Of major interest is also the question of price transparency that is likely to be enhanced on the Internet. Special attention is paid to pricing in multi-channel retailing that is investigated by means of simulations.

 

Communication Policy

As the Internet is a communication medium, communication policy offers a wide range of e-commerce-related application. Research in this area is focused on goals, instruments, applied media, design, and impact of communication towards the online consumer. Research is also related to customer relationship management, loyalty, and quality of customer data.

 

Distribution Policy

Distribution is characterized by the design and management of distribution channels as well as by physical distribution by means of supply chain management. Concerning distribution channels, relevant research issues are transaction phases and IT support in e-commerce, multi-channel retailing, and last mile logistics. In the area of supply chain management, research is focused on inter-organizational information systems, information sharing, collaboration models, such as efficient consumer response or vendor-managed inventory, and the RFID technology.

 

Management Support Systems

Management Support Systems (MSS) provide information to analyze specific situations of a company. They deliver facts for management decisions and provide standard reports for key performance indicators. MSS reorganize information obtained from other systems (like ERP systems) for analytical purposes, relevant research issues are data warehouses, OLAP and balanced score cards.

 

 

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP systems) support companies in their day to day business. They provide support for all relevant operational processes, i.e. Financial Management, Warehouse management, Sales, Procurement, Production, Marketing and Human Resources. ERP systems are integrated systems relying on unified data (usually stored in a database). This integration aspect saves time and resources on carrying out processes. Companies usually have more than one information system so one common task is to integrate other systems with the ERP systems. The main issue on implementing ERP systems is to adapt the system to the needs of a company. Concerning ERP systems, relevant research issues are selection, implementation, maintenance, and architecture of ERP systems.

 

Spanning Tools and Methods

Modeling encompasses the analysis of business (process) problems at a conceptual level which enables managers to gain a systematic structural and workflow related overview. In the next steps such conceptual models are used to devise design and implementation models, which drive the integration of new applications into the software architecture in place. In order to create the most cost- and marketing-effective software solutions, it is necessary to research the ongoing technical innovations, especially in the context of the enabling technologies that are based on the Internet/WWW. Spanning tools and methods encompass simple object-oriented scripting languages, programming languages like Java, CASE-like modeling and implementation tools, but also infrastructural concepts and software libraries that typically are put to work in e-commerce applications.