E-commerce Organizations Research Articles

Influence of electronic commerce on business performance: Evidence from e-commerce organisations in Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract: The purpose of the study was to explore the impact of electronic commerce on business performance with specific focus on business organisations in Harare, Zimbabwe. This was achieved through investigating the relationship between e-commerce investment and indicators of business performance such as cost operations, service operations and profit levels. A structured questionnaire was developed and administered to 40 respondents from 10 e-commerce organisations. The study revealed that there was a positive relationship between e-commerce investment and business performance. It was revealed that an investment in e-commerce by organisations in Zimbabwe would increase profit levels, improve service operations and reduce transaction costs. The researchers recommended that organisations that have already adopted e-commerce should raise customer awareness and interest in e-commerce and promote the usage of the technology. They also recommended that policy makers such as the Government must take a leading role in the funding of education and the development of infrastructure in order to encourage more organizations and consumers to participate in e-commerce.Keywords: E-commerce, Business performance, Business organisations, Service operations, Cost operations

Analyzing HTTP Traffic Patterns for Monitoring and Analyzing User Behavior

Objective: This paper presents a method for analyzing user behavior pattern by evaluating what web users are looking for in websites. Methods/Statistical Analysis: There are various approaches available in diverse fields for analyzing human behavior. In today’s generation web usage has increased tremendously due to wide variety of information and communication facility. The main source of data in web browsing is the web logs that stores user actions on web pages. The generated logs are analyzed in phases and then classification techniques are applied to predict future behavior of the user. Findings: This information can be used by E-commerce companies to know about their customer requirements and can later improve their websites information and structure as per results. Similarly, same analysis technique can be used by organizations to know about employee requirement. Applications/Improvement: This analysis method can be used by E-commerce companies and organizations to predict their customers and employee needs and behavior.

Hyperflexibility A feature of e-commerce organisations

The paper is sacrificed analysis of conditions organizational activity on e-commerce business and desired ways of management. Organizations on e-commerce business must be hyper-flexible because of stormy environment and high level of competition. Hyperflexibility means ability to creating new organizational forms so as to realization of different projects collaboration with other organizations and utilizing strange resources. The main condition of Hyperflexibility is pragmatic organizational culture and such its attributes as confidence, tolerance and fluent identity.

A Modified Scheme for Preventing web Application against SQL Injection Attack

Web Application are used for providing information and function on World Wide web for various e-commerce organization, medical-care, business and Government sectors which further requires security and vulnerabilities. This paper describes the type of SQL Injection Attacks and discusses the technique, to avoid them. The type of SQL Injection Attack, procedure for preventing from SQL Injection Attacks and related work which was done for this has been considered and explained in this paper. An effective and efficient scheme is proposed to prevent SQL Injection Attack which is locating between web application and database. In such a way to use SQM and Sanitization Application are necessary to extend security or keep from attacker to abusing the database. Through two way evaluations, it is proved that our proposed scheme is more secure and can forcefully cover all bases of our web-based application.

Impact of B2C e-commerce codes of conduct on sales volume: lessons from the Spanish perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to carry out empirical testing of the relationship between corporate image and corporate satisfaction among business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce organizations who possess codes of conduct and study their effects on sales volume. The aim is to measure impacts of both corporate image as well as measure corporate satisfaction on online sales volume increases. In addition, the authors have added to the study the product-type dimension as a moderate variable. Design/methodology/approach A structural model is developed and empirically tested through survey data obtained from 127 Spanish companies adhering to a code of conduct. Findings The results indicate that adhering to a code of conduct has a positive impact on the increase in sales volumes. The paper identified the main reasons for adhering to a code of conduct, such as offering greater trust to potential consumers as well as improving the firm’s image, prestige and increasing quality and security. Research limitations/implications Further variables must be identified that would help to determine the impact on organizations adhering to codes of conduct. Practical implications This paper highlights how B2C e-commerce codes of conduct help managers achieve better conditions for competiveness. The findings show how adhering to a code of conduct has a positive impact on increased sales volumes. The results indicate that the reasons for adhering to a code of conduct are the following: it offers greater trust to potential consumers, as well as improves the firm’s image and prestige, and increases purchase quality and security. Originality/value This paper contributes to the enrichment of knowledge concerning B2C e-commerce codes of conduct developed a pioneering study.

Status of e-Government in Texas Metropolitan Areas

The internet and e-commerce technologies have already altered the way businesses operate. In the recent past, E-govemment has attempted to emulate the success of e-commerce organizations. This paper explores the status of e-govemment in metropolitan areas in Texas. The paper focuses on metropolitan areas since, based on reports on online usage in the US, rural areas still lag behind the metro areas. Consequently, rural counties, in general, have not developed their official e-govemment web sites as much as have counties in metropolitan areas.

Dynamic Recommendation System Using Web Usage Mining for E-commerce Users

E-commerce organizations are growing exponentially with time in terms of both business and data. Many organizations rely on these websites to attract new customers and retain the existing ones. In order to achieve this goal web log files can be used that records customer's access patterns. Using traditional web usage mining techniques in an enhanced manner valuable patterns and hidden knowledge can be discovered. This paper focuses on providing real time dynamic recommendation to all the visitors of the website irrespective of been registered or unregistered. Action based rational recommendation technique is proposed that makes use of lexical patterns to generate item recommendation. Effectiveness of the proposed system is evaluated by collecting real time E commerce data and comparing the system with user based and product based techniques. Results prove that the proposed system yield good quality accuracy and minimizes limitations of traditional recommendation system.

Impact of E-Transactions on Direct Taxation

The spectre of massive amounts of economic activity conducted through electronic commerce has created concern among fiscal authorities around the globe. The cause of concern basically lies in anonymous, non-traceable transactions from unidentifiable locations. Most of the existing studies on e-commerce have examined the extent of its activities in the advanced countries. However, no attempt seems to have been made to examine the tax aspects of e-commerce. The present work, therefore, bridges a research gap: it identifies some of the issues related to direct taxation in the e-environment. A pre-structured questionnaire has been used to find out the practices and opinions of 75 tax professionals on various aspects related to direct -taxation. The study indicates that the tax professionals view residence based taxation as suitable for e-commerce organizations as well, yet the criteria for deciding the residence, that is, permanent establishment, needs to be modified. These findings have encouraging implications for policy regime and tax procedures.

An Exploration on the Relationship of Transformational leadership, Innovation Atmosphere and E-Commerce Organization Innovation

In the knowledge economy, the innovation already became the motivation of foundation for organization growth, especially for E-commerce organizations. Business organizations should consider how their organizational innovations for all aspects of resource optimization to increase efficiency. The purpose of this study is to build some conceptual models in transformational leadership, innovation atmosphere and E-commerce organization innovation. Through the questionnaire survey procedure in some E-commerce corporations in Zhe Jiang, this research takes correlation analysis and regression analysis. We discovered: both transformational leadership and innovation atmosphere have the remarkable influence on E-commerce organization innovation. We also find the differences of effects and their interactions directly between the transformational leadership, innovation climate and the dimension degrees on E-commerce organization innovation.

How individuals choose topics to contribute at an online context

User generated content is being recognized as part of the value proposition of e-commerce organizations. To make available fresh content on topics, one needs to understand how individuals consider existing contributions in their decision to contribute. This study develops and tests three hypotheses based on a survey and archival data of 235 contributors of reviews at Amazon.com. Results from a LISREL analysis indicate that those with greater self-perceived competence tend to submit content on topics with fewer existing contributions. On the other hand, those with higher social adjustive motive toward others in general tend to contribute on topics where there are many existing contributions. In contrast, people for whom the social adjustive motive toward specific others is salient are equally likely to contribute on topics with few and many existing contributions. These findings suggest ways for site administrators to ensure a balanced coverage across topics by addressing these individual and social factors.

Principles of Organization and Factors of Internet Commerce Development

The article provides the analysis of the factors influencing the dot-com company’s web-site functioning directly or indirectly in the system of E-commerce as an innovative form of business activity as well as deals with the principles of E-commerce organization at the stage of contemporary information (innovative) economics development and E-commerce formation on this basis.

Impact of functionalities on e-commerce in supply chain in India

The objective of this exploratory study pertains to system architecture of e-commerce development model. It understands the determinants of development of e-commerce in SCM within Indian industry. The research was initiated to study the findings and focused on the impact of organisational and social functionalities in the field of e-commerce development. Data collected from small and big enterprises were analysed with simple regression analysis. The results confirmed the explanatory power of e-commerce functionalities and organisation functionalities on e-commerce development, as in other innovation adoption. The study showed that one of the factors of supply chain functionalities, that is, SCM coordination level was significantly related to the e-commerce development level. The main findings include: (1) supply chain functionalities as a new factor group is proved to have significant power in explaining e-commerce development level among Indian companies and (2) the extent of e-commerce development varies across business types.

THE USE OF WEB LOG ANALYSIS IN ACADEMIC JOURNALS CASE STUDY

Web log reports (the reports that are generated to list the statistical data on visitors of web sites) are often used by e-commerce sites to analyze their customer data. The same reports provide valuable information on the patterns of browsing by various visitors of the web site. This information can be analyzed and further studied to use for future decision making and for the benefit of the e-commerce organization in particular and for their web site in particular. The benefits that can be gained from the web log reports are not limited to e-commerce web sites. Other organizations that conduct regular work on their web sites can benefit from this kind of reporting as well. Among the other organizations that may benefit from web log reports are research organizations that publish papers/journals and post them on their web sites. This paper is to elaborate on the type of web log reports that are generated by one research institution that publishes a number of academic journals online. The journal editors for this institution receive web log reports where data for visitors of their web sites are presented in various formats. The process of producing these web log reports, their contents and the benefits that the reports may bring to the journals is discussed in this paper.

A possibilistic-valued multi-criteria decision-making support for marketing activities in e-commerce: Feedback Based Diagnosis System

Abstract In this paper we propose a multi-criteria decision making support system, called a “Feedback Based Diagnosis System” (FBDS), to aid the marketing team of an e-commerce (EC) organisation in its activities. The FBDS database is composed of customers’ satisfaction measures. These measures are related to the different services an EC offers to its customers. Thus, they constitute a multi-criteria (MC) evaluation of EC performances. In the general framework of recommender systems, these available MC evaluations are considered as useful information for other customers to help them to objectively, rationally and exhaustively assess and compare the numerous ECs among the ones likely to meet their needs. Our FBDS is not concerned with improving or automating such a recommendation process for customers. Indeed, it is merely EC management team oriented. In fact, the MC feedback database is used to diagnose the EC health and improve its strategy. In the proposed FBDS, a possibilistic framework is combined with the multi criteria representation to capture the variability and the divergence of customers’ evaluations w.r.t. each criterion. Then, an aggregation based on a weighted arithmetic mean (WAM) is proposed to obtain a synthetic appraisal of ECs. The WAM aggregation models the strategy agreed on by the EC management team. Computing the synthesis score of an EC consists in propagating the uncertainty related to its partial scores through the WAM. The possibilistic representation guarantees that no information is lost in the collective evaluation process by the consumers’ community. However, diagnosis indicators are finally proposed to the marketing team to make the interpretation of some possibilistic results more comprehensive when necessary.

The Examination of Two Web Site Usability Instruments for Use in B2C E-Commerce Organizations

This study used a B2C e-commerce simulation in an effort to validate two Web site usability instruments. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis found the first instrument exhibited moderately acceptable measurement properties, while the second instrument displayed poor validity for the suggested dimensions. Attempted validation of these instruments and the subsequent development of a more comprehensive measure of Web site usability should facilitate an organization's understanding of the strengths and weakness of their B2C Web sites in an increasingly competitive environment.

A Chronicle of a Journey

Every email that originates from outside of an organization must go through a series of firewalls and gateways before reaching the intended recipient inside the organization. During this journey, each email may get scanned for possible viruses or other malicious programming codes. In some cases, the e-mail may also receive a score based on the possibility of spam content. On any stage of this processing email can be quarantined, or moved to a spam folder for the future possible analysis or simply deleted. Understandably, such complex structure helps secure the company’s internal infrastructure, however, e-mails have become an important tool in marketing for many e-commerce organizations and if marketing e-mails do not get to their intended receiver, the sending company will be disadvantaged. Therefore, from the point of view of the sender of an e-mail, it is important to understand the faith of the e-mail that was sent and whether it was received as intended. In this case study, we describe an e-mail bounce back system that was developed by a major e-commerce company in order to understand whether its e-mail based marketing was successful in delivering the intended message to its customers. In addition to the describing the development of the system, security and privacy issues are also discussed.

Alignment of operations strategy, information strategic orientation, and performance: an empirical study

Functional-level strategic planning should align with and support business-level strategies. Alignment of strategies is presumed to be a positive contributor to business performance just as misalignment is presumed to be a negative contributor. These presumptions should be true for all types of business environments including the e-commerce environment. This study develops and tests these presumptions by examining managers’ perceptions of strategy. Drawing on both operations strategy and information systems strategy literature, this research compares how these managers’ perceptions of operations strategy and information system strategic orientation are aligned in an e-commerce setting. Based on a sample of matched pairs of general managers and operations managers from 176 organisations in the e-commerce industry, hypotheses relating strategy and business performance are tested. The influence of other organisational variables (i.e. operations manager tenure and years of associations with general manager) to moderate the results were also tested. The results support the hypotheses that organisational variables moderate the relationship between operations managers’ and general managers’ perceptions of operations strategy, IS strategy orientation, and the fit between them in e-commerce organisations.

Information Technology risk management in e-commerce: classical and catastrophic risk approaches

In the emerging global economy, e-commerce has increasingly become a strong catalyst for economic development. However, the furious pace of technological change, along with the ever increasing utilisation of critical IT assets, has also increased exposure to IT related risks. Consequently, IT risk management has become a critical part of the operation of an e-commerce organisation. The paper presents an IT risk management lifecycle for e-commerce organisations; among other suggestions, we also propose a methodology for the assessment of IT risks, which handles conditions of uncertainty, by employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, along with the execution of simulations.

A Parsimonious Model of the Antecedents and Consequence of Online Trust: An Uncertainty Perspective

ABSTRACT Online trust is an important issue in e-commerce. Recent research has indicated that online trust, or the absence of online trust, is a key inhibitor in an individual consumer's acceptance of e-commerce. In an uncertain and complex environment such as e-commerce, online trust is an important mechanism for consumers to reduce uncertainty. Uncertainty inhibits these individuals from making online purchases and becoming loyal customers of e-commerce organizations. We developed and tested a model of online trust that addresses the major sources of e-commerce uncertainty and consumer loyalty. We found that website usability, expected product performance, security, and privacy collectively explained 70% of the variance in online trust. The strongest predictors were consecutively security, website usability, expected product performance, and privacy. We also found that online trust and privacy explain 50% variance in consumer loyalty.

Curriculum Design and Evaluation for E-Commerce Security Education Using AHP

Due to the exponentially increasing threat of cyber attacks, many e-commerce organizations around the world have begun to recognize the importance of information security. When considering the importance of security in e-commerce, we need to train e-commerce security experts who can help ensure the reliable deployment of e-commerce. The purpose of this research is to design and evaluate an e-commerce security curriculum useful in training e-commerce security experts. In this paper, we use a phase of the Delphi method and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. To validate our results, we divide the respondents into two groups and compare the survey results.