Citation
Schwartz, D.G. (2001), "What a difference a year makes", Internet Research, Vol. 11 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.2001.17211daa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
What a difference a year makes
What a difference a year makes
What a year it has been for electronic commerce. Twelve months back e-commerce was the darling of Wall Street analysts, the great equalizer for Small Business, and a dream of marketing management come true, and suddenly e-commerce has hit the unforgiving wall of reality with a resounding bang. But it behooves us to be a little more discerning in our analysis and verdict when it comes to judging the electronic commerce revolution, for, to paraphrase Twain, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
Perhaps it should have been obvious that basic economics will not support the sale of a single 50lb bag of dog food online when shipping cost dwarfs product cost by an order of magnitude. But not everything is quite so obvious. The lessons learned from the first generation of electronic commerce initiatives can be grouped into two categories: lessons related to which goods and services can be sold online and how they should be sold; and lessons related to how online technologies can be use to improve business processes. Both groups remain important and it is the latter group that forms the foundation of most ongoinge-commerce research as we can see from the selection of papers presented in this issue.
Looking at organizational issues such as corporate culture and the internal-use of data generated by e-commerce activity has become a high priority. Inventing and improving interface technologies and automation tools are as important now than ever. And the ability to develop new systems in a structured and considered manner, meshing with new strategies for companies that seek to develop an online strategy, is even more important than before. There comes a time after every paradigm shift – and e-commerce was indeed that – when we need to recover from the shock of the shift and refocus on the issues that must be addressed to improve and extend what has been achieved. That time is now, and the Second World Congress on the Management of Electronic Commerce is one of the premier venues dedicated to the continuation of those efforts.
On that positive note, we are pleased, once again, to bring you a selection of the best papers from the Second World Congress on the Management of Electronic Commerce.
David G. SchwartzEditor