Page 43 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M01_CHAF9601_04_SE_C01.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:02 Page 10

10 Part 1 Introduction

offered to customers and the business benefits that are obtainable through e-business that are
important. However, labels are convenient in defining the scope of the changes we are looking to
make within an organization through using electronic communications. Managers need to
communicate the extent of changes they are proposing through introducing digital technologies
to employees, customers and partners. Complete Activities 1.1 and 1.2 to start unravelling the
different terms through looking at how General Electric, one of the world’s largest companies,
has embraced e-business.

Activity 1.2 What’s in a term – what do we call this ‘e-thing’?

Purpose
To illustrate how different marketers perceive Internet marketing. There are a range of
terms used to describe Internet marketing – it is called different things by different people.
visit the
www It is important that within companies and between agency and client there is clarity on the
scope of Internet marketing, so the next few sections explore alternative definitions.

Question
One simple, but revealing, method of assessing how commonly these terms are used,
is to use the Google syntax which returns the number of pages which contain a partic-
ular phrase in their body or title.
Type into Google the following phrases in double quotes or use intitle: ‘phrase’ for
these phrases and note the number of pages (at the top right of the results page):
Phrase
(i) ‘E-business’
(ii) ‘E-commerce’
(iii) ‘Internet marketing’
(iv) ‘E-marketing’
(v) ‘Digital marketing’
Answers to activities can be found at www.pearsoned.co.uk/chaffey

E-commerce defined

Electronic Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is often thought simply to refer to buying and selling
commerce using the Internet; people immediately think of consumer retail purchases from companies
(e-commerce)
such as Amazon. But e-commerce involves much more than electronically mediated finan-
All electronically mediated
information exchanges cial transactions between organizations and customers. E-commerce should be considered
between an organization as all electronically mediated transactions between an organization and any third party it
and its external
stakeholders. deals with. By this definition, non-financial transactions such as customer requests for fur-
ther information would also be considered to be part of e-commerce. Kalakota and
Whinston (1997) refer to a range of different perspectives for e-commerce:
1 A communications perspective – the delivery of information, products or services or
payment by electronic means.
2 A business process perspective – the application of technology towards the automation of
business transactions and workflows.
3 A service perspective – enabling cost cutting at the same time as increasing the speed and
quality of service delivery.
4 An online perspective – the buying and selling of products and information online.