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1 Image and product information – a basic ‘brochureware’ web site or presence in online
directories;
2 Information collection – enquiries are facilitated through online forms;
3 Customer support and service – ‘web self-service’ is encouraged through frequently asked
questions and the ability to ask questions through a forum or online;
4 Internal support and service – a marketing intranet is created to help with support process;
5 Transactions – financial transactions such as online sales where relevant or the creation of
an e-CRM system where customers can access detailed product and order information
through an extranet.
Considering sell-side e-commerce, Chaffey et al. (2009) suggest there are six choices for a
company deciding on which marketing services to offer via an online presence:

Level 0: No web site or presence on web.
Level 1: Basic web presence. Company places an entry in a web site, listing company names
such as www.yell.co.uk to make people searching the web aware of the existence of the
company or its products. There is no web site at this stage.
Level 2: Simple static informational web site. Contains basic company and product infor-
mation, sometimes referred to as ‘brochureware’.
Level 3: Simple interactive site. Users are able to search the site and make queries to retrieve
information such as product availability and pricing.Queries by e-mail may also be supported.
Level 4: Interactive site supporting transactions with users. The functions offered will vary
according to company. They will usually be limited to online buying. Other functions
might include an interactive customer service helpdesk which is linked into direct
marketing objectives.
Level 5. Fully interactive site supporting the whole buying process. Provides relationship
marketing with individual customers and facilitating the full range of marketing exchanges.
Research by Arnott and Bridgewater (2002) assessed the stages of sell-side e-commerce
adoption reached by different businesses. They tested whether companies of different sectors
and sizes and located in different countries had reached one of three stages. These were
informational (information only – level 2 above), facilitating (relationship building – level 3
above) and transactional (online exchange – level 4 above). They found that a majority of
firms were still using the Internet for information provision. This is also supported by the
more recent research published in 2007 (Figure 1.10 and Figure 4.7). The main factors affect-
ing the stage adopted was the size of the company and whether the Internet was being used
to support international sales – sophistication was greater in both of these cases. Stage

models have also been applied to SME businesses where Levy and Powell (2003) reviewed
different adoption ladders which broadly speaking have four stages of (1) publish, (2) inter-
act, (3) transact and (4) integrate.
Considering buy-side e-commerce, the corresponding levels of product sourcing applications
can be identified:
Level I. No use of the web for product sourcing and no electronic integration with suppliers.
Level II. Review and selection from competing suppliers using intermediary web sites, B2B
exchanges and supplier web sites. Orders placed by conventional means.
Level III. Orders placed electronically through EDI, via intermediary sites, exchanges or
supplier sites. No integration between organization’s systems and supplier’s systems.
Rekeying of orders into procurement or accounting systems necessary.
Level IV. Orders placed electronically with integration of company’s procurement systems.
Level V. Orders placed electronically with full integration of company’s procurement,
manufacturing requirements planning and stock control systems.
In Chapter 6, the case of BHP Steel is an illustration of such a stage model.
We should remember that typical stage models of web-site development such as those
described above are most appropriate to companies whose products can be sold online