The bookshop project: An Austrian interactive multimedia application case study

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As field trials all over Europe show, Interactive Multimedia Services (IMMS) are usually considered only for the market of private households with services like ‘Video on Demand’ and ‘Teleshopping’ via TV and Set Top Box in the living room at home.Pilot examples in Austria demonstrate that there are other ways to use the same technology to realize interactive multimedia services for private and public companies and institutions. In this respect, the customer premises equipment need not to be necessarily a TV set but might be a PC representing a ‘Point of Information’ or ‘Point of Sale’ terminal located in offices, in stores or even in schools. Calculations based on experiences with an Austrian retailer who realised an interactive application predict that by such an approach an economic break even can be reached within 2 years. In addition, a broader distribution in the market is reached much sooner than by following the approach for the households mass market.