What is the right service? A multi-criteria decision model based on ‘step’

Together with the diffusion of the Internet both private and legal persons have designed a wide variety of information intensive services. At the same time, concepts and methods have been developed to facilitate the description, discovery, composition, and consumption of these services. However, the selection of the right service still represents a major problem for consumers, since policy-, reputation- or trust-based selection techniques often do not lead to the desired results. In this paper a multi-dimensional service selection model - including social, technological, economic, and political considerations - is presented that can help service consumers in this sketchy and complex task.