  In the paper, frameworks for electronic shopping of composite (modular)
products are described: (a) multicriteria selection (product is considered as a
whole system, it is a traditional approach), (b) combinatorial synthesis
(composition) of the product from its components, (c) aggregation of the
product from several selected products/prototypes. The following product model
is examined: (i) general tree-like structure, (ii) set of system
parts/components (leaf nodes), (iii) design alternatives (DAs) for each
component, (iv) ordinal priorities for DAs, and (v) estimates of compatibility
between DAs for different components. The combinatorial synthesis is realized
as morphological design of a composite (modular) product or an extended
composite product (e.g., product and support services as financial
instruments). Here the solving process is based on Hierarchical Morphological
Multicriteria Design (HMMD): (i) multicriteria selection of alternatives for
system parts, (ii) composing the selected alternatives into a resultant
combination (while taking into account ordinal quality of the alternatives
above and their compatibility). The aggregation framework is based on
consideration of aggregation procedures, for example: (i) addition procedure:
design of a products substructure or an extended substructure ('kernel') and
addition of elements, and (ii) design procedure: design of the composite
solution based on all elements of product superstructure. Applied numerical
examples (e.g., composite product, extended composite product, product repair
plan, and product trajectory) illustrate the proposed approaches.
