Information services

To date, the market of information services is characterized as the most dynamic and intensively developing. Information services are becoming increasingly important in the economy.

Information services have a positive impact on increasing the level of socio-economic development, activating investment, innovation, resource and other reserves, as well as ensuring the improvement of management processes by economic systems.

Definition 1

In a general sense, information services are understood as those actions of economic entities that are aimed at transferring certain information to third parties for a certain fee.

Information services can be classified according to several criteria:

• On the impact on consumer value;
• By methods of provision;
• By form;
• If necessary, the customer is present at the time of the provision of this service.

Information services have specific features that distinguish them from other types of services. These are: the intended purpose, different rates of loss of relevance, the possibility of repeated use, high costs of reproduction, difficult to determine utility, and high dynamics.

There are other qualities that distinguish information services, they are expressed in:

• Formalization, i.e. production, sale and consumption of information services is accompanied by some formalized operations for the use of appropriate hardware and software;
• Algorithmicity, which assumes that the production and sale of information services are a certain sequence of implementation of certain algorithms for the execution of these processes;
• Machine orientation, i.e. in the transfer of production processes, processes of implementation and consumption of information services to a virtual environment with the use of information systems of various nature;
• Dependencies on information products, i.e. the possibilities and quality of information service provision are closely related to the information products used;
• Use of the information service at a pre-agreed time;
• The global consumption of information services, which is associated with the global scale of the information and communication network;
• The expansion and complexity of the information services industry, which is expressed in the increase in the types of economic activities that are involved in the processes of functioning in the information services market, and the volume and structure of the services produced are also increasing.
• Complexity in the production, implementation and consumption of information services – when consuming specific information services, the user receives several related information services, for example, when searching for information on the Internet, the user also receives: access to the Internet, structuring information on electronic resources, the ability to access these resources, support for information requests, storage of search results, etc.

Thus, the listed qualities and distinctive features make it possible to distinguish information services from other types of services, as well as to describe the specifics of their production, sale and consumption in the most complete way.

Stages of development of the information services market

The development of the information services market can be divided into several stages. Let's characterize each of them.

At the first stage, the formation of the market under consideration took place, due to the rapid development of the economies of various states.

In these countries, the growth of the economic system, increased competition in the market was observed, in connection with which the significant role of information-type resources in the development of business processes, which were rapidly developing in various media and the field of electronic means of telecommunications, was determined.

In the second stage, there was the emergence of commercial computers that had the ability to work with various tasks of a scientific nature.

The third stage is characterized by the rapid development of information systems and technologies. Due to technological progress, comparatively powerful and inexpensive computers for business are emerging.

At the fourth stage of the development of the information services market, the emergence and development of the Internet took place.

Structure of the information services market

Definition 2

The totality of means, methods and conditions that makes it possible to use information-type resources constitutes the public information potential.

It is understood not only as a production complex of means and methods of production, processing and transfer of information resources, but also as research, educational, administrative, commercial and other organizations that provide information services using modern information technologies.

The most important components of the information services market are:

• Technical and technological support, which includes information equipment, computers, developed computer networks and information processing technologies;
• Regulatory and legal support: various legal documents;
• Information support, which includes reference and navigation structures and tools that allow you to find the necessary information;
• Organizational support, i.e. state regulation of the information services market.