Prosumers as service configurators — vision, status and future requirements

From a vendor’s point of view, e-commerce can facilitate new models of division of labor, which typically encompass a higher level of involvement on the customer’s, specifically consumer’s, end. In order to over one shortcomings in computer-mediated communications, numerous individualization or personalization features have been added to e-commerce applications. In the telecommunication industry, as one prominent example, increasingly self-service portals have been established which provide administrative functions such as billing status, change of tariff or billing address. More advanced features such as unified messaging are even more customer specific and are beneficial inasmuch as they are regularly adapted to the individual, situation specific needs.