1 COMMUNICATION – A PLATFORM FOR MUTUAL MESSAGE EXCHANGE

Information is available and all around us as never before. At the same time we experience changes – changes that has a great impact on the whole society, companies and institutions as well as on individual human beings. But changes is nothing new. Already Herakleitos told us panta rei – everthing is floating. The changes today occur however more rapidly than before. The production life cycles are shorter and many companies experience that the information about their products soon becomes outdated. That makes it necessary to find communication channels that facilitates frequent contacts between providers and customers. During the last decade information technology has provided us with new possibilities for communication. Using the Internet companies can reach customers all over the world just as easily as the next door neighbour. Internet has thus changed the communication pattern and also opened a global target area for the companies. Also customer behavior has been greatly influenced by information technology. Previously customers were more dependent on initiative from the vendor where the vendor sent messages to the customer. The vendor was thus active and th