A model of electronic commerce adoption by small voluntary organizations

The study discussed in this paper uses case studies of six small voluntary organizations to determine the primary factors that influence electronic commerce (EC) adoption. The findings indicate that perceived benefits, including efficiency, information sharing, marketing and increased donations have a strong influence on EC adoption. The results also indicate that organizational readiness, including ability to attract volunteers and/or in-kind donations, ability to raise funds, and strategic readiness had a positive influence on EC adoption. Consistent with prior research on EC adoption in the commercial sector, strong support was found for the influence of perceived pressure, including pressure from both internal and external stakeholders. The study also concluded that perceived social risks associated with the loss of human contact and the perception of dollars being diverted from client programs to finance the EC investment had a strong influence on EC adoption. Implications for EC adoption and future research on EC adoption in the voluntary sector are discussed.     

Ontologies and electronic commerce

Ontologies are the first step toward realizing the full power of online e-commerce. Ontologies enable machine-understandable semantics of data, and building this data infrastructure will enable completely new kinds of automated services. Software agents can search for products, form buyer and seller coalitions, negotiate about products, or help automatically configure products and services according to specified user requirements. The combination of machine-processable semantics of data based on ontologies and the development of many specialized reasoning services will bring the Web to its full power. The authors discuss: taxonomies; information sources; future issues; business viewpoints; the e-marketplace; and B2B e-commerce standardisation and integration.     

On agent-mediated electronic commerce

This paper surveys and analyzes the state of the art of agent-mediated electronic commerce (e-commerce), concentrating particularly on the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) aspects. From the consumer buying behavior perspective, agents are being used in the following activities: need identification, product brokering, buyer coalition formation, merchant brokering, and negotiation. The roles of agents in B2B e-commerce are discussed through the business-to-business transaction model that identifies agents as being employed in partnership formation, brokering, and negotiation. Having identified the roles for agents in B2C and B2B e-commerce, some of the key underpinning technologies of this vision are highlighted. Finally, we conclude by discussing the future directions and potential impediments to the wide-scale adoption of agent-mediated e-commerce.     

A model of Internet adoption by SMEs

The study discussed in this paper used evidence from seven small firms to determine the significant factors that influenced their Internet adoption. Evidence from four firms was used to create a preliminary model of Internet adoption by SMEs. An additional three firms were then examined to refine the preliminary model. The study concluded that three factors significantly affect Internet adoption by small firms: perceived benefits, organisational readiness, and external pressure. The study identified both similarities and differences between Internet adoption and EDI adoption in small firms. The findings have important implications for managers and service providers.     

Accountability in electronic commerce protocols

In most commercial and legal transactions, the ability to hold individuals or organizations accountable for transactions is important. Hence, electronic protocols that implement commercial transactions must be designed to provide adequate accountability assurances for transacting parties. A framework is proposed for the analysis of communication protocols that require accountability, such as those for electronic commerce. This framework can be used to analyze protocol designs to detect accountability (or lack thereof). Arguments are presented to show that a heretofore unexplored property “provability” is pertinent to examining the potential use of communication protocols in the context of litigation, and in the context of audit. A set of postulates which are applicable to the analysis of proofs in general and the proofs of accountability in particular, are proposed. The proposed approach is more natural for the analysis of accountability than the existing belief logics (e.g., M. Burrows et al., 1990) that have been used in the past for the analysis of key distribution protocols. Some recently proposed protocols for electronic commerce and public key delegation are analyzed to illustrate the use of the new analysis framework in detecting (and suggesting remedies for eliminating) their lack of accountability, and in detecting and eliminating redundancies     

Trust in consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce

We developed a model of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce trust and tested it. We expected that two influences: internal (natural propensity to trust [NPT] and perception of web site quality [PWSQ]) and external (other's trust of buyers/sellers [OTBS] and third party recognition [TPR]) would affect an individual's trust in C2C e-commerce. However contrary to studies of other types of e-commerce, support was only found for PWSQ and TPR; we therefore discussed possible reasons for this contradiction. Suggestions are made of ways to help e-commerce site developers provide a trustworthy atmosphere and identify trustworthy consumers.     

Thesaurus matching in electronic commerce

Electronic Commerce Research - This paper tackles the problem of e-commerce thesauri alignment. It includes the definition of three alignment techniques which can be combined to increase the...     

Building trust in electronic commerce

Electronic commerce lets companies integrate internal and external business processes through information and communication technologies. Companies conduct these business processes over intranets, extranets and the Internet. E-commerce lets businesses reduce costs, attain greater market reach, and develop closer partner relationships. However, using the Internet as the underlying backbone network has led to new risks and concerns. Often, industry analysts cite trust and security as the main hurdles in growing e-commerce. The paper considers how companies seeking success in electronic commerce need to set their sights on providing security and building trust     

Making business sense of electronic commerce

Although its infrastructure is still very young, e-commerce continues to create new business models and innovative marketing and technology strategies. To avoid unraveling their core processes, organizations considering e-commerce applications must take time out to evaluate the many facets of adoption and integration. Arguments for not investing in e-commerce are rapidly dissolving. It is now widely accepted that a business cannot ignore e-commerce investment without incurring heavy penalties over the long run. We believe organizations that want to invest in e-commerce must have a significantly higher degree of technological fluency and a bolder approach to experimentation with unfamiliar business models than they would for investments in other areas. Successfully exploiting e-commerce requires creatively linking an organization's strategy and its supporting technology as well as managing pervasive IT applications that change very quickly and are becoming increasingly integrated and convergent. Only then can enterprises achieve the flexible and adaptive behavior that is central to effective e-commerce     

A resource-based view of electronic commerce

A management theory known as the resource-based view of the firm states that resources foster organizational success. Our study of e-commerce retailers applied this theory to examine the effects of human, business, and e-commerce technology resources on firm competitiveness. An e-mail and Web-based survey used 458 responses from site managers. Business and e-commerce technology resources, as well as the individual business resource of process redesign, were found to predict e-commerce performance, whereas human resources did not. E-commerce performance, in turn, predicted firm performance. These findings partially support the resource-based view and coincide with differences between physical and e-commerce retailing.     

基于Web的数据挖掘技术研究及其在电子商务中的应用

基于Web的数据挖掘是一种结合了数据挖掘和互联网系统的热门研究课题。本文首先综述了基于Web的几类数据挖掘技术,包括Web内容挖掘、Web的访问挖掘、Web页面聚类以及用户频繁访问路径发现等技术。在此基础上又着重介绍了Web数据挖掘技术在电子商务中的具体应用。     

基于Web的数据挖掘技术研究及其在电子商务中的应用

基于Web的数据挖掘是一种结合了数据挖掘和互联网系统的热门研究课题.本文首先综述了基于Web的几类数据挖掘技术,包括Web内容挖掘、Web的访问挖掘、Web页面聚类以及用户频繁访问路径发现等技术.在此基础上又着重介绍了Web数据挖掘技术在电子商务中的具体应用.     

Essential controls for internet electronic commerce

This article will explore a definition of Internet electronic commerce, the risks of this new type of business activity, and the essential controls for securing systems supporting this business activity.