A Difference Analysis on E-Commerce Curriculum Offered in Taiwan, U.S.A. and Japan Using the BNAM Model

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The development of E-commerce has been highly anticipated over recent years. Research data released by the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Economic Affairs confirms that e-commerce will still dominate the business opportunities in U.S.A., Mainland China and Japan in the future. Some of the innovative applications empowered the booming of e-commerce; such as the virtual groups formed in Facebook, group-shopping that benefits consumers as well as retailers, and bonus sharing. Moreover, since Apple Inc. has expanded the functions in its smart electronic mobile devices, there has been a great progress in the development of downloadable Apps. In addition, the academic field has put extensive efforts to meet the demand for e-commerce professionals by offering e-commerce certification or establishing e-commerce departments/graduate schools as part of the educational programs. This study is based on the curriculum plan observed from various universities in Taiwan, with primary discussions on the questionnaire responses gathered from both academics and industries. A further gap analysis was conducted using BNAM (Borich Needs Assessment Model) to identify the gap between academics and industries among the three countries. The BDN analysis on the e-commerce management courses in-demand from all three countries indicates evident discrepancy between the views from the 1000 biggest companies and professors. Only three courses show no discrepancy, including Information and Society, Logistics Management, and Management in Digital Era. The analysis on technology courses all present apparent discrepancies (over 55%) between the 1000 biggest companies and professors among the three countries. Specifically, the result from Japan has a high 76% discrepancy, which would require further study to better identify the causes. There are four courses that show no discrepancy at all, including Information and Society, Logistics Management, and Management in Digital Era, Information Exploration Basics.