The Economic And Social Impact Of Electronic Commerce Preliminary Findings And Research Agenda

Electronic commerce has the potential to radically alter some economic activities and the surrounding social environment. It changes the business environment, accelerates changes under way, increases interactivity, encourages openness, and alters the notion of time.This book examines such issues as the potential for growth of electronic commerce, its impact on the efficiency of the economy, its effects on how business is organized, and on markets, on jobs, and on society. It points out that countries will dismantle barriers to global electronic commerce at different rates, and that this may raise competitive concerns. It also discusses the electronic commerce's impacts on the costs of owning a "store," carrying inventory, conducting sales, placing and processing orders, customer support, and product distribution.

This book provides a ground-breaking assessment of the economic and social impacts of electronic commerce and its effects on jobs by drawing on existing qualitative and quantitative evidence.

E-Commerce has brought about many changes in organizations and has had significant impacts on the quality of life that is experienced by individuals or even indirectly as members of society. The need to have fast and efficient information on products is crucial to our socially conscious and technologically dependent society; hence, information technology has increased the intolerable burden of handling the increasing amount of information and human errors which the society is expected to contend with. The Economic and Social Impacts of E-Commerce addresses issues associated with the advent of e-commerce, and its significance within society.

The change from old to new technologies has fundamentally changed the relationship between the consumer and the firm. This book is at the frontier of behavioural research into how these new commercial realities are borne out in practice, examining the adoption of e-commerce by small firms and the transactional phenomenon that entails access to the Internet. In analyzing the process of e-commerce adoption and why e-commerce actors behave as they do, its coverage includes the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) by small firms; the use of ICT applications to support marketing and sales transactions; and the factors that influence consumers' online purchasing decisions.