E-Commerce Strategies
i
School of Business STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY
Bachelor thesis 10 credits Autumn semester 2005
E-Commerce Strategy
- Being Physical or Virtual?
Author:
Hans Olsberg Robert Perrakoski
Supervisor: Reiner Beck (Assistant Professor)
ii
Acknowledgements
This study is the result of our bachelor thesis within business administration at Stockholm University. It has been a very interesting field of study and we think that we have found a somewhat interesting and unique approach within e-commerce. We want to give our thanks to our fellow students who gave us constructive criticism during the seminars and during the opposition in particular. We also want to give our thanks to our tutor Reiner Beck, who provided us with guidelines and interesting views on how to conduct our investigation. Finally we want to give our thanks to our respondents who enabled our interviews.
iii
Abstract
The developments of Electronic Commerce applications origins back to the early 1970s and were primarily used within the financial sector. As the potential of E-commerce was recognized its use also reached into other sectors. The trend according of intensively, increasing sales is persistent and areas such as music, books and tickets are predicted to have the largest increase. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how traditional companies, as we call click-and-mortar corporations, perceive threats and opportunities of E-commerce. We will also investigate how pure internet firms, what we call Virtual corporations, view the same threats and opportunities of e-commerce. We will also try to find changes made by both of our research groups in different strategic directions. To obtain new data in the extremely fast changing e-commerce area, semi-structured qualitative interviews with four respondents within a specific industry was conducted. What we can conclude after interviewing two click-and-mortar corporations and two virtual or “pure” internet corporations is that
School of Business STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY
Bachelor thesis 10 credits Autumn semester 2005
E-Commerce Strategy
- Being Physical or Virtual?
Author:
Hans Olsberg Robert Perrakoski
Supervisor: Reiner Beck (Assistant Professor)
ii
Acknowledgements
This study is the result of our bachelor thesis within business administration at Stockholm University. It has been a very interesting field of study and we think that we have found a somewhat interesting and unique approach within e-commerce. We want to give our thanks to our fellow students who gave us constructive criticism during the seminars and during the opposition in particular. We also want to give our thanks to our tutor Reiner Beck, who provided us with guidelines and interesting views on how to conduct our investigation. Finally we want to give our thanks to our respondents who enabled our interviews.
iii
Abstract
The developments of Electronic Commerce applications origins back to the early 1970s and were primarily used within the financial sector. As the potential of E-commerce was recognized its use also reached into other sectors. The trend according of intensively, increasing sales is persistent and areas such as music, books and tickets are predicted to have the largest increase. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how traditional companies, as we call click-and-mortar corporations, perceive threats and opportunities of E-commerce. We will also investigate how pure internet firms, what we call Virtual corporations, view the same threats and opportunities of e-commerce. We will also try to find changes made by both of our research groups in different strategic directions. To obtain new data in the extremely fast changing e-commerce area, semi-structured qualitative interviews with four respondents within a specific industry was conducted. What we can conclude after interviewing two click-and-mortar corporations and two virtual or “pure” internet corporations is that
References: 51 NUA Internet Surveys, (2003b, March)