Toward a unified view of electronic commerce

There has been an unprecedented growth in the usage of telecommunications applications recently such as electronic data interchange email and the Internet. The commercialization of Internet has led many to believe that a new era of electronic commerce has dawned. However, there is confusion regarding what constitutes ecommerce and how companies can best formulate Internet strategies. As this will report, the results of a recent pilot survey suggest that some practitioners view ecommerce as simply buying and selling over the Internet. On the other hand, many researchers believe the practice includes, a wide variety of presale and postsale activities. In addition, there are few frameworks to guide managers in choosing which Internet applications are most suitable to their given situation, how implementation of these interorganizational systems will alter their business relationships, or how companies can use Internet technology to gain competitive advantage. While the popular literature has touted the potential to gain competitive advantage from the use of EDI, the Internet and intranets, there is little direction concerning whether or not long term advantage can be achieved. It is believed that the development of extranets provide a link between the firms intranet and internet strategies that will broaden the relatively narrow definition of ecommerce currently employed by many managers. The article discusses various perspectives on ecommerce and also sheds light on how this difference in perspectives raises concern that managers may view ecommerce too narrowly and therefore may not consider the potential strategic importance of ecommerce technologies. The article discusses the concept of extranet applications.