Classification of Web based Service User Types Hamed Taherdoost Advanced Informatics School Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia hamed.taherdoost@gmail.com Neda Jalaliyoon Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia neda.jalaliyoon@yahoo.com Shamsul Sahibuddin Advanced Informatics School Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia shamsul@utm.my Javad Hosseinkhani Faculty of Computing Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia jhkhani@gmail.com Abstract— Due to the rapid development of information technology, many firms have already or plan to move from traditional service to electronic environment. One of the important factor issues which need to be considered is the user acceptance of e-service technology. In order to evaluate the adoption of web based information technology, it is vital to release the users’ needs. Therefore, the diversity of Web based service user types need to be recognized. This paper is going to classify the e-service users based on their experience, purpose of usage and geographical place. Keywords- Web based Services, Electronic Services, User Experience, User Acceptance and E-service User Classification. I. INTRODUCTION These days, many traditional services have been moved or planning to move to the electronic environment. In today's intensive competitive environments the design and delivery of innovative, flexible, and effective services is of paramount importance for business success [1, 2] . Customers use the new technologies to produce and consume services without direct personal contact with companies. Electronic services can be utilized to deliver the products and services effectively [3]. It is believed that both enterprises and costumers would like to employ the electronic services [3]. Furthermore, in a quantity of entertainment industries like music download, if corporations do not supply electronic services it may result in less competitive thus it is expected that they also have the high level of electronic services penetration [4]. E-Service is a highly generic term, usually referring to the provision of services via the Internet (the prefix 'e' standing for ‘electronic’, as it does in many other usages), thus e-service may also include e-commerce, although it may also include non-commercial services (online), which is usually provided by the government [5-7] However a system can improve the job performance but sometimes users are not eager to use the systems [8, 9]. Eservices are offered to consumers to not only provide better customer service, but also to offload labor-intensive activities from the provider to the consumer. During the last ten years a large amount of services have been launched to electronic markets and the same kind of development will certainly continue. In many cases traditional services have simply moved to electronic environment and human work is partly substituted by computers and software [6, 10]. Nowadays, e-services are applied in various applications such as e-ticketing, e-government, ecommerce, e-health, e- banking, e-booking, e-education. [4] classified products and services on two dimensions, the degree of digitization and the ability for co-creation. On the other hand, Lovelock’s [11] identifies four service categories. On a 2*2 matrix, one axis separates services that require the customer to be present (like restaurants) from those that do not (like lawn-mowing) while the second divides relatively intangible services (like education) from tangible services (like haircutting) [11]. The fulfillment- product classification scheme segments Internet retailing into four categories [3]; offline-goods category, offline services, electronic goods and electronic services. Furthermore, [12] has examined nine characteristics of electronic services; intangibility (abstract naturalness) [13- 16], process nature [15, 16], heterogeneity [13, 14, 17], inseparability which is the simultaneousness of consumption, production and marketing [13-16], perishability [13, 14, 17], ownership [14, 16-18], interactive nature [15, 16], [19] call the latter relational nature, self-service [20, 21] and non-rival [14, 22]. This paper is going to classify the web based service users based on their experience, propose of usage and geographical place. As mentioned earlier, e-service are rapidly developed and implemented, therefore, one of the main issues which need to be focused is the electronic service adoption. In this regards, 2013 International Conference on Advanced Computer Science Applications and Technologies 978-1-4799-2758-6/13 $31.00 © 2013 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ACSAT.2013.103 495