A Managerial Perspective on Electronic Commerce Development in Malaysia

This research investigates the development of electronic commerce in Malaysia. It reviews the nation's e-commerce readiness and surveys local firms, a majority of them small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on their Web presence and e-commerce initiatives, management, capabilities and performance. Overall, while e-commerce in Malaysia is in its formative phases, a majority of firms in the survey sample have progressed beyond brochureware into the interactions phase; few have reached the e-commerce phase but many are planning to. They are driven primarily by marketing considerations and have seen the greatest impact of e-commerce on their marketing and overall business operations. Taking the lead are SMEs in IT/Internet services and solutions that see great opportunities in the nation's need to build the foundation layers for its emerging Internet economy. Most reluctant and least satisfied to date are SMEs in manufacturing that find the business-to-business sector largely undeveloped. The government can take some credits for its leadership in addressing the barriers to e-commerce development but the most significant barriers falls squarely within the private sector's domain. They will have to be overcome by entrepreneurial talents and management foresight.     

Adopters and non-adopters of business-to-business electronic commerce in Singapore

Although there has been an increase in research studies of business-to-business (B2B) electronic commence (e-commerce), most studies were carried out in the United States or Europe. There are very limited studies on B2B e-commerce in the Asian context. Our effort examined Web-based B2B e-commerce initiatives in Singapore, an island of 650 km² in South–East Asia. Data were collected from 108 firms using a mail survey, which showed that 52.8% firms have adopted B2B e-commerce; of these, two-third had a formal plan and/or task force for B2B e-commerce deployment. Customer-related applications were generally more common than supplier-related applications. Problems in B2B e-commerce adoption included the difficulty of measuring benefits, fear of granting suppliers and customers access to corporate systems and insufficient time for staff to develop new skills in e-commerce. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Adopters and non-adopters of business-to-business electronic commerce in Singapore

Although there has been an increase in research studies of business-to-business (B2B) electronic commence (e-commerce), most studies were carried out in the United States or Europe. There are very limited studies on B2B e-commerce in the Asian context. Our effort examined Web-based B2B e-commerce initiatives in Singapore, an island of 650 km² in South–East Asia. Data were collected from 108 firms using a mail survey, which showed that 52.8% firms have adopted B2B e-commerce; of these, two-third had a formal plan and/or task force for B2B e-commerce deployment. Customer-related applications were generally more common than supplier-related applications. Problems in B2B e-commerce adoption included the difficulty of measuring benefits, fear of granting suppliers and customers access to corporate systems and insufficient time for staff to develop new skills in e-commerce. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Electronic commerce in China: emerging success stories

Enterprises across the People’s Republic of China (China) seek to gain the benefits of electronic business, but very few of their electronic commerce (e-commerce) initiatives have been successful to date. A recent multiple case study examined some of the exceptions. This paper illustrates the distinctive nature of e-commerce with Chinese characteristics by profiling an online retailer, a traditional B2B intermediary, and an electronic marketplace or marketspace. Their key success factors were found to include the abilities to leverage core capabilities and to overcome institutional deficiencies through relationship building. The prospects for e-commerce in mainland China are related to the development of the rules and infrastructure that are fundamental to a modern market economy.     

An integrated online pick-to-sort order batching approach for managing frequent arrivals of B2B e-commerce orders under both fixed and variable time-window batching

The emergence of e-commerce marketplace, especially the business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce sector, has created a vast market opportunity for retailers and logistics service providers (LSPs). However, facing the structural changes in B2B logistics orders, without any transformation of logistics operating process in distribution centres, LSPs are experiencing serious challenges in handling B2B e-commerce orders. In order for LSPs to grasp the market pie of the logistics and distribution sector of the e-commerce business through improving the core capability of handling B2B e-commerce order in their distribution centres, this paper proposes a novel approach for LSPs to systematically execute B2B order pre-processing so that the B2B e-commerce orders are better managed. An intelligent B2B order handling system (IOHS) is developed for efficient management of discrete, frequently arrived B2B e-commerce orders. By applying the “warehouse postponement” concept through the development of IOHS integrating cloud database management, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithm approach, B2B order grouping solutions are effectively generated. A case study is conducted in a Hong Kong-based logistics service provider who handles outsourced B2B e-commerce orders, indicating the feasibility of the proposed solution to facilitate e-order fulfilment under both fixed and variable time-window batching settings in distribution centres. A significant improvement in terms of the throughput rate of handling B2B e-commerce order in the distribution centre is found, thereby increasing the satisfaction of buyers and sellers throughout the order handling and delivery process, as well as facilitating LSPs’ capability to manage a larger number of orders received from B2B e-commerce platform, given the greater product exposure of sellers in today’s B2B e-business.     

移动电子商务的商业模式和关键技术分析

近年来伴随着智能手机的普及和3G网络的提升,以手机为基本终端的移动电子商务日渐兴起,给电子商务的发展注入了新的活力。文中将分析对大众消费产生重大影响的新的商业模式和关键技术,详细阐述移动电子商务的四大商业模式和热点技术,着重探讨其在移动电子商务中发挥的作用以及与以往商业模式和技术应用的不同,并对同时存在的问题进行分析。最后对移动电子的发展做出了总结与展望,在未来几年内移动电子商务将会迎来一个快速发展时期。     

Focus of B-to-B e-commerce initiatives and related benefits in manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises

Empirical research into business-to-business e-commerce issues involving manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is still embryonic. In an attempt to partially fill this gap, this paper presents empirical data from an electronic survey conducted among 96 manufacturing SMEs to investigate e-commerce initiatives and their related benefits. E-commerce initiatives are assessed using a set of 36 business processes that can be conducted electronically. These processes were classified according to their focus: customer (downstream), supplier (upstream) or in-house. The research findings point to four main profiles of manufacturing SMEs with different e-commerce focuses. The first group seems to lack any focus or may still be exploring e-commerce opportunities. The second and third groups are supplier- and customer-focused, respectively. The fourth group consists of the more involved SMEs that have leveraged their e-commerce initiatives with both their customers and their suppliers. Results also suggest the existence of a close alignment between e-commerce focus and related benefits.An earlier and much shorter version of this paper was published in the Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-37). Helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers were greatly appreciated. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from SSHRC, FCAR and NSERC.     

Business value of B2B electronic commerce: the critical role of inter-firm collaboration

B2B (business-to-business) electronic commerce provides firms with different business value depending on how organizations use the online network. In this paper, we distinguish two different types of B2B e-commerce adoption: basic and collaborative B2B e-commerce. With “basic B2B e-commerce”, firms implement the electronic network simply to automate the exchange of commercial documents. In contrast, B2B networks are used to create new inter-firm operations with channel partners in “collaborative B2B e-commerce.” The central claim of this paper is that firms are unlikely to achieve significant benefits with Basic B2B e-commerce. B2B electronic networks offer dramatic performance improvement only when the B2B network is used to create new collaboration with channel partners. Based on the survey conducted in the grocery industry, this study suggests that the real source of performance improvement in the B2B electronic commerce is not an electronic linkage itself, but the collaboration enabled by the electronic network.     

PIP：供应链与B2B电子商务的实现规范

介绍正在制定的Internet上IT行业工展电子商务活动的规范PIP及其实现框架。随着Internet影响的日益扩大,Internet上的电子商务变成了目前最热门的话题。PIP规范会对在Internet上开展电子商务有一个很大的促进与推动作用。     

智能车载终端的电子商务应用与发展

随着电子产品的发展以及电子商务的发展,两者的结合将越来越紧密、越来越多样化。传统的电脑、手机等与电子商务的结合告诉我们,不同的电子产品将以其不同的方式和切入点与电子商务相结合,通过研究智能车载电脑终端与电子商务相结合的例子进行分析这个过程以及所需要的条件。     

Measuring the impact of organizational constraints on the success of business-to-business e-commerce efforts: a transactional focus

This study investigated the impact of two organizational constraints, technological compatibility and operational capacity, on the success of business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce (e-commerce) efforts over a range of business settings. We focused specifically on the transactional efficiencies gained through the use of B2B e-commerce. To accomplish this, we considered an instrument originally developed to measure the benefits of intra-organizational information systems and applied it in two inter-organizational contexts: electronic data interchange (EDI) usage, and B2B technology usage by firms without EDI. Analysis was carried out on 86 firms in the consumer electronics industry, approximately half of which were product-manufacturing firms and the other half service-providing firms. Our findings showed that the inter-organizational context had a significant bearing on which constraints have a greater impact on the success of B2B e-commerce efforts.     

Evaluation of e-commerce websites using fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-S-QUAL

In the wake of the rapid emergence of e-commerce, its evaluation is of great theoretical and practical importance. Among the various types of e-commerce, business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has become a key, and especially influential, retailing channel. Its ascendancy raises core issues with respect to how the customer is to be satisfied by, and therefore inclined to trust, e-commerce websites. B2C e-commerce website evaluation, therefore, is an important related issue. First, while a number of studies have studied B2C e-commerce website evaluation using various multiple-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) methods, they have focused only on the perceived service quality of B2C e-commerce websites. In fact, it is generally recognized that service quality is determined by the difference between the expected service level (which expectation is derived from information obtained before the service experience) and the actual, perceived service level; this concept, then, should be also be afforded due consideration in B2C e-commerce website evaluation. Second, among the various MCDM approaches, TOPSIS, which involves the consideration of both the positive-ideal solution (PIS) and the negative-ideal solution (NIS), is especially pertinent to the complex decision-making entailed in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites. Third, the human element of subjectivity in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites needs to be considered in order to enable modeling of real-life website-evaluation situations. Finally, the hierarchical structure of the evaluation criteria between the main dimensions and their sub-criteria should be considered. To reflect these issues, in this paper, we present a fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-SERVQUAL (E-S-QUAL). This approach effectively considers the raised issues and preserves the core concept of E-S-QUAL (the extended version of SERVQUAL) for measurement of electronic service quality in the e-commerce environment. The empirical case study of B2C e-commerce provides the researchers and practitioners to understand in a better way the evaluation process from a practical point of view. In addition, core finding of this study is that the comparison results with other MCDM methods further verify the robustness of the proposed approach. It implies that this method potentially can be applied to performance evaluation of similar service sectors.     

B2C电子商务信用问题的对策建议

随着电子商务的发展,信用问题逐渐暴露出来,并成为制约电子商务向前发展的一个严重的瓶颈,研究B2C电子商务中信用问题不仅能有效的解决这一问题,还能为以后电子商务的发展提供借鉴和思考。同时通过对B2C电子商务信用问题的研究还有利于良好市场环境的建立和保持。     

Realising B2B e-commerce benefits: the link with IT maturity,evaluation practices,and B2BEC adoption readiness

Actual realisation of business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce) benefits from IT investments has been a critical issue for large organisations. However, relatively little research has been undertaken to determine the drivers for realising B2B e-commerce benefits within these organisations. A survey research was conducted to examine the relationships between B2B e-commerce benefits, IT investment evaluation methodologies (IEM), IT benefit realisation processes (BRP), B2B e-commerce adoption readiness, and IT maturity in large Australian organisations. An IT investment management model was developed to test these relationships. The results had empirically validated the model and indicate that a higher level of BRP adoption and increased level of B2B e-commerce adoption readiness had a significant direct relationship with B2B e-commerce benefits. In addition, the level of B2B e-commerce adoption readiness, and the level of IEM and BRP adoption were significantly influenced by the level of IT maturity. However, the use of IEM alone had only an indirect positive influence on B2B e-commerce benefits through the higher level of BRP adoption and increased level of B2B e-commerce adoption readiness.     

Quality management of B2C e-commerce service based on human factors engineering

This study investigates business-to-customer (B2C) electronic commerce services from a quality management perspective. We propose a novel quality management approach that is based on human factors engineering to manage e-commerce service quality and operate according to customer needs. First, we screen credible quality requirements and determine their weights by integrating Kano’s model with our previous work, including the model of B2C website service quality. Then, we can extract quality characteristics according to image words and credible customer requirements. The weights of the quality characteristics are deduced by refining characteristics through a house of quality reconstruction and mapping customer requirements to characteristics. Finally, based on related theories or viewpoints, the operating practices for quality characteristics entail quantitative output with importance and grades taken into consideration. Our experimental results demonstrate that operating practices can help managers understand e-commerce service quality and have useful implications for companies in the management of e-commerce service quality.     

Fairtrade.com versus Fairtrade.org—how Fairtrade organisations use the Internet

This paper summarises the findings of a study, the first of its kind in Germany, which explored the potential that the Internet can offer for German Fairtrade organisations. Data was gathered from three organisations, comparing their e-commerce strategies. Then interviews were conducted with the organisations' representatives and with the e-commerce customers of Gesellschaft zur Partnerschaft mit der Dritten Welt (Gepa), the largest Fairtrade company in Europe. The Fairtrade organisations differed in political outlook and in regards to their approach to the Internet, thus reducing the potential for cooperation and networking. However, some of the Gepa customers interviewed used e-commerce to circumnavigate the distribution difficulties characteristic of Fairtrade, thus suggesting that there is potential for increased turnover. On the other hand, many of the customers were not interested in accessing the informational part of the Gepa-website, so the potential for disseminating political information with the product is low. Based on in-depth interviews with online buyers, it is argued that customers will only access campaign information online if Fairtrade organisations become more visible in offline and online debates on global justice. Like other Civil Society actors, Fairtrade organisations need to develop strategies how they can best use the Internet for their aims. This, the paper argues, will have to include careful vetting of the brand and connected website as well as appropriate and ongoing investment of personal and financial resources. The overall marketing strategy will have to integrate the offline and online presence and should aim to customise the organisations' services to more or less committed supporters. The paper calls for further research on Civil Society's use of the Internet and advocates website analysis as a particularly useful method to decipher the non-governmental organisations' strategies as they negotiate their message with the mainstream of public opinion.     

Agents in E-Commerce: State of the Art

This paper surveys the state of the art of agent-mediated electronic commerce (e-commerce), especially in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. From the consumer buying behaviour perspective, the roles of agents in B2C e-commerce are: product brokering, merchant brokering, and negotiation. The applications of agents in B2B e-commerce are mainly in supply chain management. Mobile agents, evolutionary agents, and data-mining agents are some special techniques which can be applied in agent-mediated e-commerce. In addition, some technologies for implementation are briefly reviewed. Finally, we conclude this paper by discussions on the future directions of agent-mediated e-commerce. Received 14 September 2000 / Revised 13 January 2001 / Accepted in revised form 27 February 2001     

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.     

The influence of the commercial features of the Internet on the adoption of e-commerce by consumers

Taking the Theory of Planned Behavior as a theoretical framework, this study analyzes how commercial features of the Internet determine its adoption as a sales system. In particular, the study examines the influence of product perception, shopping experience, information provided or the level of risk perceived on the adoption of B2C e-commerce. The results show that attitudes toward e-commerce, subjective norm and perceived risk are the main factors that affect the decision to purchase from electronic retailers. Moreover, the results show that the influence of the commercial features of the Internet is mediated through attitudes toward e-commerce.     

Do security and privacy policies in B2B and B2C e-commerce differ? A comparative study using content analysis

Security and privacy policies address consumer concerns related to security and privacy in e-commerce websites. As these policies represent only the vendor’s perspective, often there exists a mismatch between the stated and desired policy. Based on transaction cost theory, we speculate that business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce customers use their transaction cost savings in order to obtain varying levels of security and privacy. These differences are bound to be reflected in the security and privacy policies of e-commerce companies. Therefore, in this paper, we perform a comparative content analysis of the security and privacy policies in B2C and B2B e-commerce. Results show that B2B vendors are more concerned about security than their B2C counterparts, while B2C vendors are anxious about intimacy and restriction privacy. Our findings have important implications for e-commerce consumers and vendors as individual and corporate consumers have varying concerns while transacting online. Individual consumers are concerned about maintaining security and intimacy privacy, whereas corporate users are anxious about regulatory issues. Therefore, B2C vendors should incorporate stringent measures dedicated to confidentiality and protection of consumer data as well as enhance intimacy privacy in their security policies, while their B2B counterparts should focus on enhancing restriction privacy.