Service Pattern Modeling and Simulation: A Case Study of Rural Taobao

Abstract

In recent years, various innovative service patterns have been practiced with the blooming of modern service industry (MSI). However, its theoretical construction lags far behind practice. The existing service models in concept-level or process languages in practice-level cannot fully express the connotation of service pattern, which covers concept, modeling, and practice, bringing about the difficulties on pattern modeling and simulation. This paper proposes a service pattern description model which decouples the service pattern into two layers: the element layer and the relation layer. Meanwhile, a process-oriented closed loop simulation framework is developed and applied on the Rural Taobao, a case of Alibaba. The simulation framework contains four parts, namely market environment, process calculate, value output and regulatory environment. In case study, we illustrate that our methods can help business analyst identify bottlenecks and estimate the performance of service pattern. At last, the ability of our methods are discussed by comparing with other models and simulation approaches.