Re: offeredBy to supersede vendor, merchant, provider, seller, …?

Whilst we are looking at this, which makes sense to me, can we address the issue of Offer.seller being inappropriately named for non-commercial offers (e.g.. to loan a book).

This could be simply solved by extending the domain of provider to include Offer.

Also would it make sense to make seller a sub property of provider - in the light of  “If a 'seller' is not provided, it is assumed the 'provider' is also the 'seller’."

~Richard

On 4 Jun 2014, at 00:05, Jason Johnson (BING) <jasjoh@microsoft.com<mailto:jasjoh@microsoft.com>> wrote:

Properties and Classes associated with describing the entities involved in offering or selling something.

provider - The person or organization providing the service, reservation, or creative work. The provider may subcontract out the service.
Service.provider
Taxi.provider
GovernmentService.provider
CreativeWork.provider
Reservation.provider **
Flight.provider
TrainTrip.provider
BusTrip.provider

serviceOperator - The operating organization, if different from the provider. This enables the representation of services that are provided by an organization, but operated by another organization like a subcontractor.
GovernmentService.serviceOperator

bookingAgent - If the reservation was not booked directly through the provider, the third-party booking agent can be recorded through this property.
Reservation.bookingAgent **

vendor - A sub property of participant. The seller. The participant/person/organization that sold the object.
BuyAction.vendor

merchant - The party taking the order (e.g. Amazon.com<http://amazon.com/> is a merchant for many sellers).
Order.merchant

seller - The organization or person making the offer.
Offer.seller

carrier - The party responsible for the parcel delivery.
Flight.carrier
ParcelDelivery.carrier

** note that Reservation encompasses the subclasses (BusReservation, EventReservation, FlightReservation, FoodEstablishmentReservation, LodingReservation, RentalCarReservation, ReservationPackage, TaxiReservation, TrainReservation)

Proposed Changes

•         Leverage 'provider' to describe the service provider, service operator, or service performer and update its description to more clearly indicate this intended usage;
•         Leverage 'seller' property to describe the entities which sell a service on behalf of the actual service provider. In the case of flights, this would be the airline through which a flight was booked.  If a 'seller' is not provided, it is assumed the 'provider' is also the 'seller'.
•         Introduce a 'marketplace' property to describe the entities through which 'sellers' (or 'providers' as sellers) advertise themselves and are discovered by buyers or agents of the buyer.  Amazon and Expedia would be examples of marketplaces.
•         Introduce an 'agency' property to describe entities which purchase or book services from sellers on behalf of entity for which the service will be performed.  Concur travel agency would be an example of an agency.

•         deprecate 'vendor' in favor of re-using 'seller'
•         deprecate 'merchant' in favor of a new 'marketplace' property; avoids confusion w/ 'seller'
•         deprecate 'carrier' within Flight and ParcelDelivery in favor of using the newly described 'provider'
•         leverage 'provider' to describe what 'serviceOperator' is intended to describe and leverage 'seller' to describe what was previously described via 'provider'
•         deprecate 'bookingAgent' in favor of the proposed more generic 'agency' property


From: Vicki Tardif Holland [mailto:vtardif@google.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 3, 2014 11:54 AM
To: Thad Guidry
Cc: Simon Spero; PublicVocabs; Martin Hepp
Subject: Re: offeredBy to supersede vendor, merchant, provider, seller, …?


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 2:50 PM, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com<mailto:thadguidry@gmail.com>> wrote:
Cape Air could also be a provider as well... they "provide the flight" .. for the cost of a ticket offeredBy a vendor American Airlines.  Would that be true, Vicki ?

In theory, yes. If Cape Air provided the ticket, the provider would be Cape Air and one could add the redundant statement that Cape Air is also the operator.

I would like the vocabulary to be a little less ambiguous on this point so that authors have some hope of getting their markup correct.

- Vicki


Vicki Tardif Holland | Ontologist | vtardif@google.com<mailto:vtardif@google.com>