Importance of E-Commerce

1.1 The Mountain Footwear is a small company in the UK, it sells good quality walking and climbing footwear. The retailing is situated in Milton Keynes and main aim of the company is to expand the market. The hypothesis to enlarge the business through a web site will be elaborated in this report; issues such as security and privacy must be concretely analysed. Setting up a business, will bring many advantages both for customer and company. Even though those benefits come with some risks and disadvantages, such as credit card fraud. it is important to understand how the market is developing in order to determine whether there will be an active online market for the company. Overall, the expansion of the business through the e-commerce will be considerably beneficial, enlarging the market and people’s awareness of the organization.

1.2 The MD and the others directors of Mountain Footwear have requested for a report based on considerations in order to determine whether it would be an advantage or not to start up an online service aimed to allow customers’ purchases through the internet.

1.3 An explanation of e-commerce is given by Rayport & Jaworski (2001, p.3) who describe it as: “technology-mediated exchanges between parties (individuals, organizations, or both) as well as the electronically based intra- or organisational activities that facilitate such exchanges”. On the other hand Kalakota and Robinson (1999, p. 4) define electronic commerce as: “buying and selling over digital media” giving more importance to the role of the Internet in every trade. There must be considered that e-commerce also involves other activities such as marketing and advertising but only if they take a position on the Internet.

The electronic business involves both e-commerce and information technology to achieve the aim to start up or develop an existence business. The purpose is to use a wide range of technologies to optimise all business processes. When a minor company decides

References: McKay, J. and Marshal, P. (2004), strategic management of e Business, Milton, John Wiley & Sons Australia (Simon Stokes, 2009) http://www.imrg.org/8025741F0065E9B8/(httpPressReleases)/31EF2052D4C59C518025755A004F1CC1?OpenDocument McKay, J. and Marshal, P. (2004), strategic management of e Business, Milton, John Wiley & Sons Australia http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=8 McKay, J. and Marshal, P. (2004), strategic management of e Business, Milton, John Wiley & Sons Australia Whiteley, D (2000), e-Commerce, Strategies, Technologies and Applications, England, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Rose, J (2007), second edition, The Mature Student’s Guide to Writing, New York, PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Appendix