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The research empirically investigates the relationships among supply chain B2B e‐commerce, environmental uncertainty, organizational structure, and time‐based delivery performance. The results show that B2B e‐commerce enhances time‐based delivery performance. The process turbulence component of environmental uncertainty has direct influence on B2B e‐commerce implementation and an indirect influence as mediated by the integration dimension of organizational structure. Process turbulence thus indirectly has a positive effect on time‐based delivery performance, whereas demand unpredictability has no effect. Integration within the firm associates with B2B e‐commerce implementation, while decentralization and formal control are unrelated to B2B e‐commerce.

This paper aims to obtain optimal specialization mode and level for complex network or system structures. In the e-commerce system, this paper studies the changes of each transaction subject in the process of ecological structure based on the income level of each transaction subject.

This paper aims to research the change of transaction efficiency evolution process of intermediaries. With the improvement of transaction efficiency, intermediaries interact with other transaction subjects at given modes in e-commerce systems. This paper analyzes the relationship between the factors of production and trade and explains the quantitative relationship between them in the form of mathematical modeling. An evolution simulation framework is established to elaborate the simulation process and method of crowd network in e-commerce ecosystem and then sets up the simulation experiment.

During simulation processes, the changes of data are observed and analyzed to obtain the optimal evolution paths and specialization modes. Furthermore, this paper provides solid supports for the research of the quantitative analysis of ecological structure evolutions.

Evolution simulation of ecological structure is first proposed in the topic of crowd network. It is with the aid of the concept of ecology, the theory and method, simulation of complex network structure and system structure. This paper analyses and researches the evolution process of optimal specialization modes and intelligent level of crowd networks with transaction efficiency changing. The ecological structure optimal evolution paths can be obtained by trend of simulations.

While most e-commerce studies focus on the understanding of online customer behaviour, mainly adoption and purchase behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between e-commerce and individual performance. The authors test the role of systems, information and service quality in e-commerce use and user satisfaction. Trust may become an important aspect for a consumer’s decision making, based on this the authors identify the effect of the role of trust on e-commerce use, user satisfaction and its impact on individual performance. This research has theoretical and managerial implications, since the protagonism of e-commerce is increasing in both academia and industry.

The authors apply a research model that integrates information systems success dimensions and user behaviour in the form of trust. The empirical approach was based on an online survey questionnaire of 437 individuals from Portugal.

The results reveal that overall quality and overall trust are important to explain use and user satisfaction in the context of e-commerce, which further leads to individual performance. The findings indicate that a higher level of use and user satisfaction increase individual performance.

The authors integrate information systems success dimensions and overall trust to understand the significance of e-commerce individual performance. The authors expect the results to enrich the understanding of the importance of considering both technological and behavioural factors to increase the success of e-commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth investigation of e-commerce strategy implementation in mature franchise organisations from both franchisor and franchisee perspectives.

This research employed a multiple case study method where the e-commerce strategies of two mature franchise organisations were investigated in depth. Franchising experts were interviewed to provide an additional dimension to this study.

This research found that e-commerce must be integrated with the overall business strategy for optimal franchise performance. Since all parties to the franchising relationship are affected by the introduction of e-commerce, both the franchisees’ and the franchisor’s interests must be considered when the strategy is being developed. In addition, the consumer’s perspective is central to how e-commerce is structured, and franchisees are best placed to know their customers’ needs because they are directly involved in operating their business and interfacing with customers.

A preliminary model for e-commerce structures in service and retail franchising has been developed that depends on the nature of the business, the distribution arrangements and the order fulfilment arrangements. The two main avenues in e-commerce structuring were centralisation and decentralisation.

This study contributes to knowledge through an in-depth investigation of the internal process of e-commerce implementation in franchise networks from both franchisor and franchisee perspectives.

This study mainly focuses on the potentiality of the e-commerce industry's opportunities and limitations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) specifically toward non-oil revenue sectors.

E-commerce contribution to the retail market industry becomes more global and more flexible with the rapid growth of the Internet and information technology revolution. A new way of conducting business is rendered by e-commerce, which helps to make a profit electronically.

The main contributions of e-commerce are management of company operations, easy and cheaper ways of extending their markets and coordinating with the value chain across different borders. In addition, the Internet and e-commerce are responsible for removing language barriers, cultural diversification and extending the market to the national boundaries. The countries would have many innovative and dynamic aspects by the beginning of the global market that increases national revenue, market, employment opportunity, capital and access to technology and information.

At present, KSA's national revenue mostly depends on oil and its related commodities, while other trades compete with the global market and increase national income. So, it is essential to increase other Saudi products to reach a global business level through e-commerce. Moreover, the study suggests accessing new markets and participating in global production to improve e-commerce structure without affecting current employment patterns, industry structure, productivity and Saudi culture.

The paper aims to determine and assess the cost positions that mostly impact the company total cost efficiency in supply chain management under theoretical and empirical background.

In the paper, the systemic and logical analysis of e‐commerce expert research made over the past several years was used. For the empirical research, the data of a wholesale company cost structure and processes management was used.

Major findings allow stating that e‐commerce adoption in business has a positive impact on business efficiency in several areas. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of e‐commerce impact on business efficiency shows that the main cost positions, which directly depend on e‐commerce adoption and use, and experience quite big changes, are average cost of inventory management, the cost of materials ordering process, and the cost of labour.

The presented empirical research confirms the theoretical implications of e‐commerce impact on business efficiency. Using this information, the future research should be made on evaluation of indirect e‐commerce impact on business efficiency.

The empirical research of e‐commerce adoption in a wholesale company confirms that the main areas where e‐commerce has an important positive impact on business efficiency are the cost of inventory management, the cost of materials ordering process and the cost of labour.

The e‐commerce impact on business result analysis is improved by detailed costs, which depend on e‐commerce adoption, analysis and definition of e‐commerce impact on business results, by evaluating the business efficiency in quantitative and qualitative forms.

E‐commerce is such a new phenomenon that little research has addressed the effects it has on relationships in supply chains. A qualitative study was conducted with eight e‐commerce companies in order to construct theoretical relationships with which to develop a grounded theory of the impact of e‐commerce on managing supply chain relationships. The e‐commerce environment was perceived as highly uncertain, stemming from increased information visibility and dynamic market structures. A stronger emphasis on relationship management as part of business strategy enables managers to manage uncertainty better. Interestingly, increased information does not decrease the perception of uncertainty, but creates more uncertainty. As logistics is the function often involved with both information and relationship management within the supply chain, it may prove to be invaluable in helping firms succeed in this dynamic environment. Our research also found support for the application of transaction cost analysis and the resource dependence theory in explaining interorganizational relationship formation in e‐commerce.

An issue of increased interest in metadata research concerns finding ways to store, in the metadata of an information resource, data regarding the resource's quality. The purpose of this paper is to present a metadata schema that facilitates representation and storage of data related to the quality of an e‐commerce resource, the e‐commerce evaluation metadata (ECEM) schema.

A study of quality approaches that can be applied for the evaluation of e‐commerce resources is provided. The ECEM schema structure and elements are described. To demonstrate how ECEM can be used, two indicative examples are given: describing an e‐commerce quality approach, and storing quality evaluation results. A discussion about the validation and implementation of ECEM is also provided.

It has been demonstrated that ECEM can be effectively used to describe e‐commerce quality approaches. ECEM also facilitates the structured representation and storage of quality evaluation results. It is recommended that ECEM metadata be encoded using the eXtensible markup language (XML); thus, a corresponding XML schema has been produced.

Metadata about resources' quality has been developed ad hoc, according to the needs of each particular application domain, and cannot be applied in other contexts. E‐commerce is one application domain where no such contributions currently exist. ECEM is a step towards the reusable and interoperable storage of quality information in metadata. It is expected to facilitate a large number of potential applications, such as quality‐oriented search of e‐commerce resources and reusable storage of evaluation results.

The objective of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the impact of context on the adoption of e‐commerce in supply chains.

A literature review, 45 semi‐structured interviews in four different supply chains in the UK healthcare sector, involving 16 different organisations, and additional documentation is used in this study.

The adoption of e‐commerce in supply chains is simultaneously affected by two contextual meta‐variables: external pressure, which is influenced by supply chain structure, demand and industry characteristics; and internal readiness, which is influenced by IT, organisational and buying need characteristics. Different combinations of these two main variables lead to four different trade‐off situations affecting adoption or non‐adoption.

The empirical research has been undertaken in the specific context of the UK healthcare supply chains. It would be useful to test our findings in other sectors and countries.

The paper helps to understand the contextual factors that affect e‐commerce adoption and concludes with a framework that differentiates four situations that can improve managers' and researchers' understanding of e‐commerce adoption in the future.

The contribution of this paper is the recognition that the adoption of e‐commerce is affected by factors in both an organisational and a supply chain context, which simultaneously lead to trade‐off decisions. Also, unlike most other studies which refer to supply chains and are limited to an organisational perspective or at most a dyadic perspective, this paper builds up a supply chain picture of context by including perspectives from multiple actors in a chain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the structure of the concept of customer‐perceived quality (CPQ) in electronic commerce (e‐commerce).

The study applies the methodology of concept mapping to data obtained from online and offline focus groups. Following a series of structured conceptualization tasks, the data were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to establish a conceptual construct of e‐commerce CPQ.

The proposed conceptual construct consists of six dimensions: outcome quality; consumer service; process controllability; ease of use; information quality; and web site design. The study finds that online consumers attach more importance to quality attributes associated with outcome quality and consumer service than to attributes associated with web transactions.

The sample should be extended to facilitate the generalization of the findings from this research.

This paper identifies a three‐level structure for e‐commerce quality as perceived by consumers. The study offers practical insights to online retailers in providing superior service.