A Concept for the Evaluation of E-Commerce-Ability

Abstract

Although many corporations currently try to establish e-commerce as a new field of business and as many corporations are already in the middle of implementing it or have just finished doing so, only a few e-commerce concepts prove to be successful in the long run. The question “Why?” is indeed difficult to answer, especially if a systematic approach for the analysis is not available. We deduced from our current research that e-commerce can only be successful if the corporation is structured according to the requirements of its e-commerce activities. That is, it is most likely to fail if e-commerce is only realized basing on the Internet as a new distribution channel, without changing the internal view on customer processes and without restructuring certain elements such as internal processes and structures and inter-business networking.