An enhanced model framework of personalized material flow services

A growing concern about the consumer behavior in Internet economy has spurred the study of Material Flow, resulting in a unique type of consumer behavioral analysis. This research proposes an enhanced conceptual model for Personalized Material Flow Services for consumer behavior. In the era of Internet information technology, customer’s taste tends to be personalized for their market demand. It is observed that there are number of ‘Long Tail’ phenomena in several successful e‐commerce business cases. However, the Long Tail phenomenon is an open question for our research in terms of its role in e‐commerce marketing. In the proposed model‐X‐Party Personalized Material Flow Services, three elements are discussed. They are ‘providing’, ‘locating’ and ‘obtaining’ based on X‐Party Material Flow theory for which the concept of virtual collector, information filter and Material Flow coordinator are discussed. Business examples of Amazon, Dangdang and Taobao are used to analyze the elements of the virtual collector, information filter and Material Flow coordinator of the Personalized Material Flow Service system.