Home shopping of consumer goods - conceptual aspects of virtual supermarkets

Due to the improvement of multimedia and networking capabilities of home user's PCs, new teleservices have become feasible during the last half-decade. One kind of such an application could be a virtual supermarket, that may be spread out as a CD-distribution in the near future. A CD-ROM-based supermarket can for instance be realised technically as a spin-off version of the first existing public shopping terminals, like those operated by the BP company in Germany. A supermarket on CD can run much faster and cheaper than any Web-based solution, because network transfers are reduced to a minimum. Only orders and updates (concerning prices and availability of goods) have to be transmitted over the line, while all high-quality material for prsentation is already contained on the CD. This hybrid solution may also serve as a model for other future teleservices that require high-quality multimedia presentations. A demonstrator version of a virtual supermarket.