Toward the Construction of Customer Interfaces for Cyber Shopping Malls: HCI Research for Electronic Commerce

coordination, the systems on top of this can be information processing types of information systems. The information technology infrastructure does not only favour textile and apparel industry. The infrastructure is also adopted by other industrial applications in Hong Kong, such as service industry, transportation logistics, and CAD/CAPP/CAM. Most of these applications cover all of the information access, coordination and processing functions. The information technology infrastructure is highly cost effective for the executive managers, designers and merchandisers in the textile and apparel industry. The information technology infrastructure also helps to speed up their retrieval of worldwide industry information. By always being able to keep track of the most current product trends worldwide , the users' competitive advantage will be increased. This provides the necessary information infrastructure to put the Government Industry Projects' applications to practical use. With the advent of the new technology, we can continuously improve the performance, such as real-time access and solid security , for this infrastructure. ~NTRODUC~ION Nowadays, one of the most evident changes in the area of information technology is the Internet. The rate of increase in the use of the Internet is second to none compared to any other technological advances in the modern era (Chon, 1996). Twenty to thirty million people are estimated to use the Internet currently, and the number is expected to grow to two hundred million by t h e year 2000 (Hoffman, Kalsbeek, and Novak, 1996). As the use of the lnternet becomes prevalent, it is expected to have a profound impact on our everyday life (Kraut, 1996). One important change that can be brought by the Internet is manifested by electronic commerce. Electronic commerce is defined as the execution of information-laden transactions between two or more parties using interconnected networks (Kalakota and Whinston, 1997). It is a generic term to include all the commercial activities using any kind of networks such as ED1 or the Internet. Due to the rapid diffusion of the Internet, the market for electronic commerce is also expected to increase sharply to 600 million dollars by the year 2000 (IDC, 1997). Electronic commerce can be classified into three distinct categories: inter-organizational electronic commerce, intra-organizational electronic commerce, and consumer to business electronic commerce (Kalakota and Whinston, 1996). Of the three, consumer-to-business electronic commerce, mostly implemented as cyber shopping malls, has the greatest potential to influence everyday life (Chung, 1996). Through cyber shopping malls, customers can learn …