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Product-oriented design theory for digital information services

A literature review
Fons Wijnhoven and Jeroen Kraaijenbrink
School of Business, Public Administration and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to give a structured literature review, design concepts, and research propositions related to a product-oriented design theory for information services. Information services facilitate the exchange of information goods with or without transforming these goods. Exemplar information services are e-publishing, electronic communities-of-practice, and management reporting. The importance of information services in the current economy merits the development of an explicit product- and process-oriented design theory. Design/methodology/approach This article focuses on the product-oriented design theory by applying Walls et al.s framework. A product-oriented design theory of information services identies relevant descriptive and explanatory insights (i.e. content, use, value, and revenue), meta-requirements, and meta-designs. The paper describes design problems for information services, and gives key requirements for information services. Next, it describes the information, organizational and information technological components of an information service, and identies at least four information service architectures. Finally, it gives research hypotheses, research ideas, and discusses practical implications. Findings The results form a product-oriented design theory for information services. The paper gives a structured way for practitioners to analyze information service design challenges, and suggestions are given for requirements and design decisions on three aspects (content, use feature, and revenue). Originality/value Given the previously fragmented nature of the literature, this paper gives new opportunities for research and practice. Keywords Electronic publishing, Information services, Internet Paper type Literature review

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Received 21 September 2006 Revised 16 July 2007 Accepted 2 October 2007

1. Introduction This study is on the design of information services. Information services are services that facilitate the exchange of information goods with or without transforming these goods. A service is dened by Kotler (1988, p. 477) as . . . any act or performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Information services perform to help people understand the world by delivering or making accessible relevant and useful information. Information is meaningful data or meaningful representations (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Stamper, 1973). Thus, a key result of using an information service is having meaningful and relevant data (this is what Kotler (1988, p. 477) names a major service with accompanying minor goods). Information services facilitate buying, selecting or accessing a variety of information goods by different information customers (Womack,

Internet Research Vol. 18 No. 1, 2008 pp. 93-120 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1066-2243 DOI 10.1108/10662240810849612

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2002). Although an information good can contain different media (printed or digital; Meyer and Zack, 1996), we follow Bhargava and Choudhury (2001) and restrict our research to informing digital goods. In the information systems discipline a service is often dened as . . . a unit of functionality that some entity (e.g. a system, organization, or department) makes available to its environment, and which has some value for certain entities in the environment (typically the service users) (Lankhorst, 2004, pp. 85-86). This broad description of a service is applicable to all kind of services, such as people-based services (like professional services, skilled labor services and unskilled labor services) and equipment-based services (like automated services, equipment services operated by relatively unskilled people, and equipment services operated by skilled people) (Kotler, 1988, p. 478). Before the extensive use of computers for informing, information services were mainly people-based and mostly professional services. With the growing use of computers, however, information services have mainly become equipment-based. Yet, there is still a need for professionals to manage (i.e. design, congure and operate) information services skillfully. Related to information services are web services. Such services, however, aim at delivering software applications from different supplier locations that match the use context needs (Moseley, 2007; W3.org, 2002), whereas information services aim at informing. Web services, though, can also deliver useful applications to support informing processes of information services. The digital nature of information goods has enabled traditional information services (e.g., libraries, publishing, and press agencies) to innovate with the help of computers and the Internet. The Internet has brought both producers and consumers of information an increased range of opportunities for accessing more information. However, the downsides of this have become evident, and may be grouped into three problem sets. First, people experience information overload (Landau, 1969; Simon, 1976), particularly because of the massive volumes of content supplied on the Internet. This volume is difcult to handle during search and selection activities (Lawrence and Lee Giles, 1999; Poston and Speier, 2005; Spink, 1997). Secondly, the Internet does not supply sufcient means to establish the use value of information available on the Internet (Choo et al., 2000; Grote et al., 2002; Vishik and Whinston, 1999) Finally, information services require some kind of revenue for cost coverage, but rules for pricing are difcult to establish (Gallaugher et al., 2001; Shapiro and Varian, 1999) and content owners therefore are sometimes reluctant to share their most valuable information (Davenport and Prusak, 1997; Kankanhalli et al., 2005). Different actors may take the roles of suppliers of content, sponsors, customers, and subcontractors. Together these realize the ows of content, content use features, and revenues intermediated by an information service. Suppliers deliver content and sometimes also content use features (e.g. content-interaction options and data analysis tools) in return for some revenue (this can be money, but also, for example, reputation building opportunities) (McLure Wasko and Faraj, 2005). Sometimes suppliers even pay for the information services intermediation. Sponsors deliver content (advertisements) for their visibility on information service websites. Sponsors also may be altruistic, meaning that they nancially support well-doing facilitated by an informative website (e.g. a website that informs people with specic diseases). Information service subcontractors, like information service providers and software

suppliers, increase the value of the information service by delivering additional content use features in return for nancial revenues. Subcontractors, thus, do not deliver content. Customers deliver content in the form of requests and comments, receive content and content use features, and may pay or get paid for using the service depending on what the sponsor and suppliers are willing to pay for the customers. A viable information service must have a business model that species what stakeholders deliver in return for what, and this business model must enable the service to at least cover its costs (Dodd, 1996; Johnson, 1994; Warnken and Felicetti, 1982; Warr, 1994). Consequently, information service business models may be conceptualized as value nets (Stabell and Fjeldsted, 1998), where actors take roles as suppliers or collectors of content (C), suppliers of use features (U) and revenues (R), some of these supplies are required and others are optional for a successful information service. This is presented in a value net model (Figure 1). Numerous information services also named information brokers, infomediaries or information intermediaries have been established in the past years to mediate between producers and consumers of information goods (Womack, 2002). Some of these services are established rms, like LexisNexis and Reuters; others serve communities of practice in a non prot way, like www.isworld.org; and still others are ways for organizations to bundle their content and improve communications with internally and externally interested people (like www.vatican.va). Besides of a viable business model, an information service needs processes to acquire, process, and disseminate information on behalf of others (Rose, 1999). An information service is able to do this by: . acquiring, aggregating, displaying, processing, creating and delivering content according to specic client needs, so that the data become more relevant for the client; . delivering additional use features to increase the value experience for information users; and

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Figure 1. An information service as a value net

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realizing a stream of revenues and possible nancial transactions for the information good supplier and the information service owners (Bhargava and Choudhury, 2004; Strens et al., 1998).

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These processes need a set of human and information technological means to become efcient. Together, these are named the infrastructure of an information service (Maglio and Barret, 2000; Meyer and Zack, 1996). Many information services in practice have cost coverage problems, have poor levels of content maintenance, or ceased to exist soon after an initial success (Chyi and Sylvie, 2000; Picard, 2000). This indicates that it is not self-explanatory how an information service should cope with the challenges of developing the business models, process models, infrastructures for handling content, content use, and revenues of information services (Picard, 2000; Rose, 1999; Shapiro and Varian, 1999; Womack, 2002). The large amount of design options and the lack of a theory for information services design make information services design challenging. The next section starts addressing this challenge by further describing the concept of a design theory in the context of information services, which also helps to explain and further focus this literature study. 2. Design theory and research design Walls et al. dene a design theory as . . . a prescriptive theory based on theoretical underpinnings which says how a design process can be carried out in a way which is both effective and feasible (Walls et al., 1992, p. 37). Such design theories consist of . . . an integrated prescription . . . of a particular class of user requirements, a set of system solutions . . . , and a set of effective development practices (Markus et al., 2002, p. 180). Product-oriented design theories focus on features of the end product; that is, these provide meta-requirements and meta-designs that help to solve classes of problems and create classes of artifacts. Following Walls et al., . . . we use the term meta requirements rather than simply requirements because a design theory does not address a single problem but a class of problems (Walls et al., 1992, p. 42). Requirements, thus, consist of specied goals or solutions for a problem. For an information service this implies the specication of the content, use features, and revenue mechanisms to enable effective intermediation between content suppliers, information goods consumers and sponsors. With respect to meta designs, Walls et al. (1992, p. 42) say: We use meta design because a design theory does not address the design of a specic artifact (e.g. a payroll system for XYZ corporation) but a class of artifacts (e.g. all transaction processing systems). A design theory for information services also describes the meta-design as a set of components and relations between them, according to which subsystems and systems for information services can be designed. The components consist of databases, organizational structures, people with certain skills and tasks, work processes, and information technologies. Product-oriented design theories require kernel theories to select meta-requirements and meta-designs that may solve the intermediation problems faced in reality (Markus et al., 2002). A kernel theory consists of propositions explaining behavior that governs design requirements and effective designs in contexts (i.e. theories that explain what components are useful and how they can be related in a system). Given an

understanding of the requirements behavior, designers may select specic design options which they think will be effective. Product-oriented design hypotheses consist of propositions that link meta-requirements to meta-designs in context. If the design hypothesis is incorrect, any design built according to this design theory will show mismatches with agreed or aimed at requirements. Process-oriented design theories focus on the methods, techniques, and procedures by which people are able to design successfully. Following Sowa and Zachman (1992), an information system design process has design steps corresponding with different design layers; i.e. layers of decomposition from abstract notions of a system (the business model) to its realization in concrete databases, organizational and technical means (the infrastructure). Although many general insights exist about design processes for information systems (e.g. Avison and Wood-Harper, 1990; Sowa and Zachman, 1992; Wierenga, 2003), this article assumes that a theory of design processes is served much by a well-developed product-oriented theory. Such a product-oriented design theory for information services, unfortunately, does not exist at the moment. Only fragments of such a theory are scattered around and created by authors from different disciplines (especially economics, knowledge management, and information systems). Consequently, this article aims to design such a theory on basis of a literature study and a systematic analysis and integration of the literature. For the analysis, we adopt Walls et al.s (1992) structure and components of a design theory. The objective of this paper is to structure product-oriented theory for information services design, following the structure that has been provided by Walls et al. (1992). This paper will answer the four core questions for design theories: (1) What existing scientic theories (kernel theories) are applicable for understanding requirements, designs and their effectiveness for information services? (2) What meta-requirements are relevant for information services? (3) What meta-design is common for information services? (4) What testable propositions can be derived from the theory for information services design? To answer these questions, the article continues by describing existing explanatory, predictive and normative theory (i.e. kernel theories) for information services design. Thereafter, we discuss the meta-requirements which belong to this class of information systems, which are further elaborated to meta-designs. We mention testable design hypotheses at the end of the article, and discuss their consequences for a research agenda. Each question is answered by rst treating the content aspect, next the value aspect, and nally the revenue aspect of an information service. The main components of this study are summarized in Table I. 3. Product-oriented kernel theory for information services Ogden and Richards (1946) and Sowa (2000) distinguish two information related content issues: representation and conceptualization. Representations signify objects and events in reality by codes and media, for instance by words in a language or artifact. Representations are necessarily incomplete and often (partially) incorrect. Because of time priorities, many audiences will not be interested in a full story of an event or will experience information overload if all data are presented. Therefore,

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Elements of a product-oriented design Consequences for the design theory of theory information services Kernel theories: theories from natural or social sciences governing design requirements Theories are needed that explain the difculties and opportunities of solving content, use value, and revenue problems by information services on the Internet Meta-requirements: the class of goals to Requirements are needed to nd relevant which the theory applies solutions for content, use value and revenue-related problems Requirements must be translated to an Meta-design: the class of artifacts organized set of infrastructure means and hypothesized to meet the meta service architectures requirements Testable design hypotheses: empirical Statements that propose how requirements statements about design can be effectively and efciently related to design components

In section 3

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4 5 6

Table I. Elements of product-oriented design theories and structure of the paper

selectivity of the content creator and information service, although also a potential source of bias, may be a valuable service for a content consumer. Beside of incompleteness, incorrectness, and selectivity, any representation is necessarily ambiguous for its potential users (Poston and Speier, 2005; Weick, 1979). Some creators of representations may even intentionally submit incomplete, incorrect, selective, and ambiguous content. For instance, a press release of a politician may be selective to avoid unwanted interpretations and to invoke actions needed to realize certain policies. In any representation a specic type of medium, coding, and possible natural language(s) will be used that possibly t with the intended audience and purposes. Conceptualization determines the level of understanding and generalization of the information goods delivered to the services customers. A low level of conceptualization gives blunt representations of reality. Such representations consist of labels that have a shared meaning for a certain group. High levels of conceptualization give explanations, predictions and methodologies with high levels of control. Conceptualization thus gives a theoretical or linguistic meaning to representations and may use classes and constructs to describe objects in more generally (Sowa, 2000). This is presented in Figure 2. Given the different levels of representation and conceptualization, several information goods may be identied from the perspective of the receiver or buyer (see Table II).

Figure 2. Conceptualization and representation processes

Information services need to deliver information goods with appropriate levels of representation and conceptualization, which may vary over customer groups. For example, academics may appreciate information goods with high level of conceptualization whereas operational practitioners need low levels of conceptualization. Or, whereas decision makers may need low levels of representation (only specically relevant data) analysts often need high levels of representation (e.g. large detailed data sets). Although a specication of content at appropriate levels of representation and conceptualization is important for the users value experience, it is not enough for user information satisfaction. At least four additional dimensions can be distinguished (Doll and Torkzadeh, 1988): accuracy, format, ease of use, and timeliness. These dimensions each set specic challenges for information services: . An information service can handle accuracy for instance by rating the certainty of evidences and insights (e.g. by asking a panel or past users to rate it), by certication through an expert in the eld, or by giving the user opportunities to check the evidence and conclusions (Poston and Speier, 2005). . An information service can handle format by using different technical and/or natural languages, codes, or visualizations. For instance, for an online mobile stock exchange data service, the data have to be transformed to the technical languages and formats that are compatible with the screen layouts of the clients mobile devices. Translation services also may be benecial for people who read messages in a foreign language. An information service may offer software that translates different technical languages and provide interprets for translations. . An information service can supply different usability options (Choi et al., 1997; Dix et al., 1997; Loebbecke, 1999). Interactiveness options enable customers to manipulate the information good, to add features, or to remove items. Use intensity and use duration options supply the information good for single-use or multiple-use or for a specic time slot. Operational use options may deliver content as a single set of data, but also may include executable codes. Externalities may be facilitated by an information service though selective delivery content to a target audience or broadcasting the content to a general audience. In case of negative externalities, the contrary effect happens because the owner cannot exploit an information asymmetry (Lin et al., 2005). An information service also may supply intellectual property rights (IPR)
Level of representation High Data deliveries; news; datasets and databases; shared resources for (professional or academic) communities Professional advice; scientic articles; patents, models; business process models; management reports

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Low Level of conceptualization Low

High

Qualitative observations and reports; business intelligence reports; skills descriptions; undocumented policies Theories; paradigms; formalized organizational routines and norms

Table II. A classication and examples of information goods from a content perspective

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management by excluding access and user rights to the content. When the content owner needs nancial returns for staying into business, the right of selling, modifying, applying in products, and copying of the good is mostly exclusive to the content creator or the intermediating information service. Most goods, but especially information goods, can have a very strong declining value through time and space. This applies particularly to stock exchange data, which even depreciate in seconds. Some other information goods are not that sensitive to depreciation (e.g. archival data and dictionaries). Also, much information is only of value when being at specic locations. An example is trafc congestion information. Information services thus need to be tuned well to handle timeliness of information goods.

Information services may deliver much content with high use value, but this does not necessarily imply that the service will cover its costs, and insufcient revenue may put continuity at risk (Warr, 1994). Gallaugher et al. state that providers of digital information goods are unsure how to price, package, and market their products and are struggling with determining the appropriate revenue model mix (Gallaugher et al., 2001, p. 476). The reasons for these cost coverage problems have their roots in behavior of content suppliers, behavior of potential customers, and information markets characteristics. Digital information goods have very low distribution costs. Therefore, increasing economies of scale may result in excess increases of gross prot for information good suppliers. Consequently, supply easily becomes over-abundant leaving the customer with large search costs. Quality certicates and branding may be important to generate credence for the customers. However, competition among sellers of commodity information pushes the prices to zero, because there is no natural oor to the price except the cost of producing and distributing another piece of information (Shapiro and Varian, 1999). This causes a big problem to information goods producers, as they mostly have to carry high costs of creating the rst copy, whereas their opportunities of generating incomes may be small. This is what Shapiro and Varian (1999) name the rst copy cost principle. In many cases, though, information services do not deliver commodity information, but also may deliver the more conceptual and customized information goods. This is particularly the case in professional and academic communities of practice (Davenport and Prusak, 1997; McLure Wasko and Faraj, 2005; Van Baalen et al., 2005). In these communities the information goods that are delivered and exchanged are hard to price, and owners of content may be caught in a prisoners dilemma when they perceive that the information value they deliver to others is not equivalent to the value others deliver in return. In such situations, the information service is solely a facilitator of possible exchanges between members of a community, and the service is valued not so much on the content it delivers but on the exchanges it enables. From the information service customers perspective, the question of what is a feasible revenue mode is highly dependent on the ability of the customer to assess the value of the service and the willingness to pay. Credence is named as an important aspect here (Nelson, 1970; Poston and Speier, 2005). Search characteristics give a potential buyer information about the service to enable its valuation before consuming it. In the context of information service this is a bit like trying to judge a book by its

cover or any evaluation, rating or reputation indicators (Poston and Speier, 2005). This information is often insufcient for making buying decisions. Experience characteristics enable a buyer to temporarily or partially consume the good so that the buyer can value the good and the credibility of the information supplied about it. This is easily realized in physical goods, e.g. by car-tests. In selling information services, experience characteristics are problematic, because once experienced, a buyer may not need to buy it anymore. Credence characteristics enable a buyer to trust the credibility of third-party ratings. This is important in buying information goods that require high quality standards. For instance, certain newspapers are bought because of their reputation. Womack (2002) distinguishes ve information market tests that determine the revenue model and the opportunities of pricing. The rst test is if the information to be delivered is for private or social benet. In the latter case pricing is difcult and cost coverage by a social agency or government sponsorship is more likely. The second test is if the information is transparent or opaque. If opaque, pricing is more difcult, because it is difcult for the consumer to evaluate the value. However, certication efforts may reduce this problem. The third test is if there are many or only a few intermediaries. If there are many, there will be a possible competitive market and pricing is an essential element in such a market. If the intermediary is a near monopolist, pricing over cost coverage may be regarded as socially not acceptable. The fourth test is if the information to be offered is in demand of many or only a few. If there are many clients, this will require an extremely efcient revenue collection mechanism. If there are only few clients, highly customized services may be delivered and pricing is the result of mutual negotiations. The nal test asks if the information is useful for paying clients or for clients that have little ability to pay. In the latter case the costs will have to be covered by sponsorships. The kernel theories presented here, have described and explained how three aspects of an information services impact on actual problems for information service management. The main kernel theory ndings are summarized in Table III. 4. Meta-requirements for information services Following the kernel theories, information service design has to cope with three classes of challenges related to content, use value, and revenue. This section describes meta-requirements for each of these three challenges. At the end of the 1960s, the use of computers for delivering content resulted in questions concerning how to express a need and how to transform an information need to a specied query (Taylor, 1968). This is a persisting problem in information retrieval

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Information service aspect Content Use value Revenue

Information service management implications Difculty of selecting the right level of conceptualization and representation for potential consumers Supplying proper levels of accuracy, format, usability and timeliness Pricing is difcult and not equivalent to value; costs coverage uncertainties; importance of ratings and credibility; rst copy costs principle (i.e. high development costs but prices are pushed to zero) Table III. Summary of kernel theory expected information service management problems

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(Cole, 1998). Despite all the technological improvements, the recall and precision of Internet search engines remains disappointing. Lawrence and Lee Giles (1999), for instance, report a recall (coverage with respect to estimated web size) of 16 percent and precision (percentage of valid links retrieved) of 14 percent for the best performing search engine. They also expect that these performances will get worse in the future, because of the rapid growth of the Internets content base. An information service may reduce information overload by deciding on what is a relevant information product or service is for the customer. The core meta-requirement related to the content aspect therefore is relevance of the information good and the ability of the information service to deliver that relevance. Relevance is more difcult to specify for digital goods than for physical goods. A physical good can be presented to a buyer by pictures, animations and simulation or temporal use. This is possible for information goods as well, but the unlimited opportunities and variations of information goods make it difcult to precisely state the users needs and interpreting the relevance of retrieved documents from a query is difcult (Spink, 1997). The problems of information overload and relevance can be described by the dimensions: representation and conceptualization. Representation describes the relation between the set of content that is actually wanted and what is actually supplied after a query. Three values may be given to this variable: under-representation (insufcient content is delivered), match (exactly enough content is delivered), and over-representation (too much content is delivered). Conceptualization denes what level of abstraction a user wants or is able to process cognitively. Seven levels can be distinguished here ranging from the simple presentation of data to the presentation of tested scientic formulas (Bohn, 1994). The two types of content matches and mismatches are represented in Table IV. Empirical evidence has shown that normalization is an effective instrument to increase representation match (Taylor et al., 2003). Conceptualization match can be realized through the processing of personal prole indicators, when the content has sufcient indicators for the target groups of its products (Spink, 1997). This thus requires target group information being attached to information goods in the content bases. We approach use value by the user satisfaction construct, which is a multi dimensional concept involving accuracy, format, ease of use, and timeliness in addition

Level of conceptualization by connecting target group information with the content in the content base Insufciently abstract Match Over-abstract Level of codication by content base normalization Table IV. Content requirements Underrepresentation Match Overrepresentation (overload) Required content

to content (Doll and Torkzadeh, 1988). Vishik and Whinston (1999) give a role to information services in guaranteeing certain accuracy levels by checking the correctness, validity and reliability of the information they intermediate, and as such reduce uncertainty in information markets. Poston and Speier (2005) propose the following concrete meta-information that can be used and supplied to content consumers to judge the accuracy of retrieved content: indicators of the number of raters of content, indicators of raters expertise, and collaborative ltering. Choi et al. (1997) and Loebbecke (1999) mention the following ease-of-use characteristics of information goods that information brokers can facilitate: interactiveness, temporality, locality, use duration and use intensity, opportunities of using information in products and services of the information consumer, reducing information asymmetry (and thus increasing information externalities), or explicitly not doing so by creating asset specic information goods. Benbunan-Fich (2001) emphasizes the role that information services can play in ease-of-use aspects, like formats (e.g. natural language options and visualizations) and Chen and Yen (2004) emphasize the realization of interactivity (playfulness, connectedness, reciprocal communication, information collection, and choice). Also the handling of intellectual property rights (e.g. by delivering information regarding the conditions in which certain information can be used, Picot et al., 1997) and annotations of the context of the informations origin and relevance (Sowa, 2004) can be regarded as useful services that may increase the perceived usefulness (Karahanna and Straub, 1999) and value of intermediate information. In contrast to the content aspect, here the core issue is not relevance but the core meta-requirement is optimized perceived usefulness for the content consumer as well as for its content owner. With respect to revenue requirements, to make a business protable, we must understand a business model as a proposal for all actors involved in an information service. These actors consist of the information good suppliers, who create content and submit it to an information service (which is managed or owned by a service operator), content consumers who take or buy the content, and some ancillary services (like payment and information service provision) and sponsors. Typically the value of an intermediary for a buyer relates to the number of goods and sellers that can be reached through intermediation, as the value for a seller depends on the size of the demand it will face with it. The activity thus involves asymmetric network effects: one type of users is interested in the number of users of another type. Moreover, different types of users buy different services and they face different types of prices. The combination of these two factors, asymmetric network externality and third degree price discrimination, opens the possibility of cross-subsidization among users (Caillaud and Jullien, 2001, pp. 798-799). Suppliers and customers thus may be charged or paid out differently. Sponsors are often important for realizing information services (Womack, 2002) but attempts of services to raise advertising incomes may result in high use costs, so-called clutter costs, which are ctive prices for the consumers (Dewan et al., 2002). Consequently, it is important to know when it is appropriate to ask prices or to dene motivational structures in non-monetary terms. They also indicate that different actors (i.e. sponsors, clients, content suppliers, support people and information service managers) may deliver different contributions and thus cross-subsidizations may happen.

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On basis of this literature review, we summarize the requirements for information services in Table V as a set of demands and required processes for information services. The processes are interlinking mechanisms between stakeholders of the information service. Information services link activities of the stakeholders in a sequence (Clemons and Lang, 2003, Meyer and Zack, 1996 and Wijnhoven, 2002), but they also congure the resources and efforts of different stakeholders. This implies that information service processes can be conceptualized as a value conguration (Stabell and Fjeldsted, 1998; Robertson and Reese, 1999), and must have at least three core processes: (1) Delivery, which can be content logistics (i.e. information services that acquire, store, and distribute content), content transformations that improve content value over what the supplier already delivered, which thereby increases value by delivering the proper kind of representation (reducing overload) and the proper kind of conceptualization (reducing cognitive distance and misunderstanding) by content transformation. (2) Use facilitation, via delivering content interaction means or meta-information (e.g. accuracy indicators) about the content delivered (Vishik and Whinston, 1999). (3) Transaction processing, which compensates suppliers and external use facilitators by collecting funds from customers and sponsors, and to cover the services own costs (Strens et al., 1998). The processes are related to the stakeholders in a value network as depicted in Figure 3. 5. Meta-design of an information service Based on the meta-requirements of Section 4, this section identies the design components and service architectures. These components consist of service processes supporting databases (containing data, meta-data, information for service management like contract data and user log data), organizational structures and people (with expertise and tasks for, e.g. web development, transaction processing and administration), and information technology (e.g. data communication, web services, security and payment systems). These components should be clearly aligned to business process activities. Table VI gives groups of the related components per process. With respect to content-related processes requirements, an information service needs different components: . For acting as a content logistic portal, the service does not change anything with respect to the supplied good, and just transfers the good as it was supplied to the service. In performing this function, an information service is an aggregator and distributor of information goods like www.comtex.com. Such a service may have an important role in reducing search costs for customers. Personal proles of clients (Orwant, 1996), databases, and product families are vital elements in such a design. A virtually unsolvable problem in this context is the coping with diverse ontologies and classications (Wu et al., 2001). Given these search problems, human information broker expertise is important for generating high quality retrievals with least efforts (Vishik and Whinston, 1999). A number of

Problems

Requirements (demands)

Requirements (processes) Delivery of content User facilitation Transaction processing

Content

Use value

Difculty of selecting the right level of conceptualization and representation for potential consumers Supplying proper levels of accuracy, format, usability and timeliness

Revenue

Pricing is difcult and not equivalent to value; costs coverage uncertainties; importance of ratings and credibility; rst copy costs; high development costs; prices are pushed to zero on the Internet

Normalization (representation match) Client group targeted information (conceptualization match) Perceived usefulness indicators; accuracy checking; ease-of-use (including format); property rights handling; context metadata Charging of suppliers, customers, and sponsors Payments of suppliers, customers, and subcontractors A business model that results in an equitable balance of charging and payments, resulting in a sufcient surplus to cover the services costs

Digital information services

Table V. Requirements for information services

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Figure 3. Business process model for information services as a value network

technical developments also exist that support brokers or replace them, such as new ltering and retrieving technologies (Belkin and Croft, 1992; Grote et al., 2002), retrieval feedback (Spink, 1997) and RSS feeds. For transforming the levels of representation and conceptualization of the supplied information, an information service needs different means. The level of representation and conceptualization can be changed by offering different versions of information goods that serve different user proles and needs. For instance, a university can offer a website about its newest research ndings that serves academic and general audiences by more conceptualization for the rst and less for the second group. It can also deliver summary reports (low representation) and accesses to the full original data resources (high representation). The content bases, sponsors, and subcontractors also have to be acquired, and thus contracts have to be managed.

Representational and conceptualization match can be achieved by content logistics and transformation efforts of the service, but often realizing high levels of match requires delegating the transformation efforts to the client, by giving the clients the tools to compose their own information goods. This results in two types of information service architectures: (1) With the centralized website architecture, the information service provider takes all the responsibilities for providing its target clients with the right kind of information through denitions and production of target group related

Information and databases

Components Organization and people

Information technology

Service processes

Content logistics and transformation

Data administrator; web developers Querying system; database management system; HTML and style sheets; content aggregation tool (e.g. RSS); webserver Contract with users; user support personnel (e.g. developers); use feature suppliers; intellectual property right handling Administrative personnel Visualization, analysis, interaction software; data- and text-mining tools; annotation tools; community building tools (e.g. del.ic.ios) Transaction-processing system; billing and payment systems

Use facilitation

Information products and product families with different conceptualization and representation levels; database(s); customer and supplier information Personal user proles; user needs; metadata (e.g. reviews); user log data Prices, sales volumes, invoice information, contracts with external stakeholders; user log data

Revenue: transaction processing

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Table VI. Groups of possible components for information services

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product families. This especially happens when the information supplier has a clear and targeted set of communications to its target groups, like with most company websites or product support sites. An interesting example here is the Derwent World Patent Index, which tries to cover all the patents in the world in its database, and sells access to its database to, for example, engineers in companies or technology strategy managers in companies (see: http://scientic. thomson.com/derwent/). The Derwent Database has a set of tools for searching, comparing and gaining additional information (e.g. concerning specic property right issues) for its users, but is also incorporated in a broader set of tools for (content) analysis and intellectual property rights management (named Aureka), search (Delphion), and is also accessible from for instance the intellectual property rights market place www.yet2.com. (2) With the aggregator architecture, the information service provider enables the client to nd and compose his own information goods, and it helps the client to nd what it needs. This is often the case when the information service wants to help specic groups with similar interests, which are often difcult to specify in advance. An example is the website of the Dutch hornist society (www. hoornistengenootschap.nl/), which contains little information about itself, but has a huge collection of links for French horn enthusiasts (amateurs, professionals and general audience) to nd more information about, for example, French horn producers, composers, and orchestras. This website is also integrated in a so-called webring (see: www.crickrock.com), by which it is easy to switch to thematically related websites. These two architectures are modeled in Figure 4. With respect to the use value requirements, we identied different opportunities of users to interact with the content and the delivery of meta-information, which all require specic IT facilities. For content-interactions, we identify: . Translation comprises giving information of the language in which the information is coded, technical language translation (code and format), and natural language translation. . Content interactiveness can be varied by delivering only standard formatted reports, delivering standard reports with customized formats, giving

Figure 4. Two architectures for content-based information services

opportunities of analyzing data by a set of given models, and analyzing data by models that the users can create easily themselves or by data and text mining tools. Temporality and locality of the good can be varied by intentionally delaying information delivery or by alerting on basis of location indicators via mobile devices. Use duration can be varied by giving a time slot with a certain duration for accessing. Operational use can be varied by delivering only descriptions of the content, delivering a design of the content, delivering executable software, and delivering source code (which enables the receiver to act as co-producer of the software).

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For meta-information we identify: . The information service may enable externalities by supplying information with respect to the level of acceptance of the good by the general audience. Information may also be kept secret when needed. . Quality and reliability information can be delivered by providing quality certicates, by providing reputation information about the good and the source, and by providing opportunities to verify the information by other sources (Poston and Speier, 2005). . IPR information can be delivered consisting of the right to use, the right to change form and structure of the good, the right to reap the prots, and the right to (re)sell (Picot et al., 1997). . Semantic-web and ontologies that help to standardize and integrate data from different sources in one (virtual) database (Wijnhoven, 2002). This may be extremely valuable in environments where data consolidation is feasible (e.g. in standard management reporting) or where standardized data exchanges in a value chain are needed (e.g. electronic data interchange enable interrm business processes), but it is extremely challenging in the world of distributed Internet-based resources (Berners-Lee et al., 2001; Guha et al., 2004; Lei et al., 2004). Often less ambitious solutions are aimed at like the exchange of annotations of people who share certain data, or some text and data mining to nd patterns among the semantics used by suppliers and users of certain data. This discussion of use-value indicates at least two other information service architectures: (1) The community architecture, which does not aim at full information integration but aims at providing ways of interacting with content such that it enables community building by meta-data processing. An example here is www. YouTube.com which allows members of the community to share meta-data on music. These comments can be used to develop communities of people with common interests or expertise and helping others to develop their interests. (2) The integrated data architecture aims at the consolidation of data from different sources by a common data standard or ontology. A well-known variant of this is the data warehouse (Kimball and Merz, 2002), which integrates data from

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different resources. Such data integration is much more difcult when more text-based or multimedia data have to be integrated via the Internet. For this purpose the semantic web community tries to realize solutions (Berners-Lee et al., 2001; W3.org, 2002), but realizing these solutions is complex (McIlraith, 2004), although some interesting options exist by applying text and data mining tools. Following these two descriptions, we have two architectures in Figure 5. For the revenue-related design, suppliers and buyers may pay an access rate, a registration price, or a transaction tax. The service operator may apply cross-subsidization mechanisms to optimize the networks externalities of the service. The sponsors pay fees related to their visibility for relevant target group. The gross income of the service consists of the contributions of customers, sponsors, and afliates minus the payouts to suppliers and (sub)contractors. The collection of payments and processing of payouts for the service may need the following administrative procedures (Gallaugher et al., 2001): . Advertising. In this process, the buyer does not pay directly for the content received, though the buyer may pay indirectly by clutter costs or increased costs

Figure 5. Two information service architectures for use value

of the products and services of the sponsor. The sponsor also does not directly pay for content, but the sponsor pays for presence. Subscribing. Here the buyer does not pay for a single item but for a collection or bundle of information goods that may be supplied periodically or through access periods of the source. This revenue collection method is rather simple, because there is no need for separate pricing of individual items and the total transaction costs for the buyer are very low. A disadvantage of this system is that the buyer also pays for unwanted items. Online ordering/off-line payment of printed documents. This process involves that documents are delivered in hardcopy versions, and that the delivery is accompanied by a bill. This is a revenue collection method for online newspapers and magazines. For instance, National Geographic allows people to access their items via their web site. The web site is funded by customers of hardcopy versions and sponsors for which the web-site generates interests. Syndicating. This process is an intermediation between content-owners and potential content buyers. Here the syndicator can consist of a portal that sells content of others, collect the money from the buyers and transfers the funds to the owners. Paying per unit. This process requires that the units are well dened, that they are correctly priced and that the transaction costs per individual transaction are low enough to make the transaction economical. With small units, like a weather report or telephone number request, this requires small prices and revenue collection mechanisms which are able to process micro payments. Selling additional merchandise. Many commercial content suppliers deliver content for free to attract other (but related) business that can be priced. For instance www.euronorm.net gives away all kind of useful reports and advices to SME entrepreneurs to let them enable to conform to industrial norms. To be able to perform according to these norms, rms need measurement equipment and training which they may buy from the owner of the web site. Afliate program processing. This process enables incomes for portals and web sites when they redirect clients. In some models a click-through is directly paid to the portal, in other instances the web sites have agreed to show to each other what business has been generated by them and some sharing of the prot than is executed.

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Additionally, we identify: . Paying per data packet. This process is important when prices are hard to dene from the semantic value of the unit delivered, or when the supplier wants to be content-blind (e.g. like in the telephone industry; MacKie-Mason et al., 1996). In this case, the supplier calculated the number of data (bits) or access time, and thus prices and bills per data and time units. . Finally we identify the paying out of subcontractors who delivered supportive services.

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Because these revenue processing mechanisms are a common part of the electronic commerce literature, this article about information services will not treat them in detail, however, at least some of its components should be kept in house by the service, whereas other components can be better left to a supporting rm (e.g. a bank). Consequently, we will not describe the architecture for such revenue processing systems here. 6. Design propositions As stated before, design proposition state empirical relations between kernel theory notions, meta-requirements, and meta-designs (Walls et al., 1992; Markus et al., 2002). When these design propositions are incorrect, the design will be based on incorrect views of reality and the resulting design may probably (although not necessarily) fail (Gregor, 2006). Consequently, design propositions must be stated as empirical causal relations between design aspects, meta-requirements, meta-designs and information service success. We have summarized the main causal statements mentioned in sections 3, 4, and 5 in Figure 6. This diagram is a summary of our ndings thus far and a start for more systematic further research to complete the causal model and corroborate the propositions (i.e. each causal arrow in the diagram). 7. Conclusions, design propositions, research implications and discussion 7.1 Conclusions The beginning of this article stated four research questions, which now can be answered: (1) What existing scientic theories (kernel theories) are applicable for understanding requirements, designs and their effectiveness for information services? We identied three major theories, each emphasizing one aspect of an information service: semiotics (discussing the representation and conceptualization aspects of content and information service challenges to treat these), information satisfaction theory, and information economic theory (discussing revenue). (2) What meta-requirements are relevant for information services? Successful information services need to match content at the appropriate levels of representations and conceptualization, but information services also need to be able to treat accuracy, ease of use, format, and timeliness of information delivered or facilitated, and information service should be able to realize supplier and customer benet and t its services in line with information market characteristics. For these demands, an information service requires processes for content handling, use facilitation, and revenue processing. (3) What meta-design is common for information services? Information services require a set of informational, human, and technical components to support the service processes, and these components can be organized in service architectures. We identify at least four service architectures: centralized, aggregator, community, and data integration. (4) What testable propositions can be derived from the theory for information services design? A set of propositions is suggested by the literature, which we summarized in Figure 6.

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Figure 6. A model of information service design propositions (each proposition is presented by one arrow in this diagram)

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7.2 Research implications Information services have a lot in common with other types of information systems, as they help to acquire, store, retrieve and re-use existing information, but they have a specic issue in common with emergent knowledge processes (Markus et al., 2002): the moment of use is often not known in advance, and the characteristics of the use situations may be very diverse. This means that a lot of exibility in the use contexts is needed, which is realized by supplying use features as additions to a planned content delivery process. The information supplied by information services may not only be just data, but is intended to inform people and thus to contribute to their insights in the world. Here the differences between the centralized and community architectures manifest themselves. Parallel to Moorman and Miners (1997) hypothesis that content volume has less impact on longer term success of innovations than content sharing and distribution efforts, we may be able to test this hypothesis in the context of projects that are supported by a central repository versus projects that are organized along a knowledge sharing mechanism (i.e. the centralized website versus community architecture), and measure the longer term success of both architectures. With electronic commerce systems, information services share the need to have useful business models that result in positive exchange relations between the actors involved. These exchange relations are not only managed by monetary concerns but may involve other less tangible exchanges as well. Consequently, successful information services facilitate positive quid-pro-quo relations between owners of information and their possible customers. Research by McLure Wasko and Faraj (2005) and Van Baalen et al. (2005) provides interesting options for studying quid-pro-quo balances between individuals and organizations. Both studies point at understanding motivational balances and the game theoretical dilemmas that actors may have when sharing information in a context of uncertain returns. We believe that game theoretical research in this context is still in its infancy. Basic problems encountered here is the denition of payoff matrices (how should we estimate expected utility with regard to knowledge?) and the large variation of payoff structures that are possible (see Bierman and Fernandez, 1998). We believe that an analysis of payoff structures and its consequences for motivations to share is essential for understanding the effectiveness of knowledge sharing via information services. Apart from possible cultural difference here, we expect that the commodity nature or more conceptual nature of the type of information potentially shared results in very different behavior as well (see also Kankanhalli et al., 2005). The high level of variations of what people want to do with the services, and the problems of predicting what they will actually do, requires that the development process needs an evolutionary nature. This evolutionary nature may imply that information services will have to be managed like dual information systems kola and Koota, 1999), and that the initial delivery of the system is just its (see Ka initiation in stead of its completion (Wijnhoven, 1999). Information services have in common with emergent knowledge support systems that they should be acceptable for ve users, but they also are separate units that have to show their value to a na community by delivering real value through a good service. The use process of an information service has to be developed as an evolution and improvement process in interaction with the developments of the network of expertise it is part of. This raises further questions with respect to the monitoring of the actual use of information

service, management actions that have to be taken on basis of certain user behavior, and the support of service managers by management tools. We want to note that we have developed a product-oriented design theory of information services. These insights are important for the design process, but are not the tools for the design process itself. We suggest further research with regard to the design process management and the methods and techniques for designing information services, by the following two research ideas: (1) Research idea 1: An investigation into information service design scenarios. In this study contingencies related to the type of information goods (like high versus low conceptualized information goods) and the exchange governance nature (i.e. market, network or hierarchy) of information exchanges may be studied with regard to their implications for the organization and structuring of design activities. For instance, highly conceptualized information goods may emphasize use value and regard content and revenue as secondary activities to be looked at during the design process. Highly conceptualized information also may emphasize human organizational matters as part of the infrastructure, whereas low conceptualized information goods may be more technically supported (see Kotlers, 1988 distinction between people or equipment-based services). The exchange governance nature of information services (Williamson, 1991; Womack, 2002) may have considerable design process implications, though its consequences are still not fully understood. In both cases, comparative cases (with different levels of conceptualization and exchange governance types) may result in considerable insights for effective and efcient design processes. (2) Research idea 2: Development and exploration of methods and techniques for information service design. Much research is still needed with respect to different techniques for representing business models, business process, process supportive applications and service design components to develop conceptual architectures of information services. Previous work on enterprise architectures (like Lankhorst, 2004) may be very useful, but given the insights in the product-oriented design theory of information service a specic language for information services may be needed. 7.3 Practical implications Although we have concentrated on information services, we believe that information services design theory can help in analyzing and solving problems with regard to practical information management issues. Firstly, creating and delivering appropriate content is a major topic for management control in organizations. Traditionally, management information systems have been developed by modeling the managerial reality, through which precise needs for information could be dened (see Davis and Olson, 1985). In practice, such models easily become overly complex. A more internal market focused approach, would help information providers to consider being market actors who sell information goods to internal client groups. The main ambition than is knowing how many people are in need of what data and what are they willing to pay for it. If such a business model is claried, the process models and the infrastructure can be developed and information supply orientations can be transformed to demand orientations (Taylor et al., 2003).

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Secondly, information services design theory may help in refreshing business processes by reducing process complexities through the identications of what is relevant information for whom in the interlinked network of activities. As an example here is the case of a mail-order rm we have been consulting. In this rm, front ofce personnel is bombarded with phones and (e)mails concerning delivery problems, product problems, and bills which according to the client need further clarication every day. This resulted in communication queues and sometimes even not completed complaints. The management wanted to improve customer services by automating parts of customer-relation management (CRM) via a knowledge-based system and further process engineering. However, this approach was overly complex, and our suggestion to go to the core of an information good by identifying stakeholders, information products and an intermediary service between front-ofce (and clients) with internal expert has become the current development strategy.

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