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Table of Content
Problems
Even if a provider of E-commerce goods and services rigorously follows these seventeen
"key factors" to devise an exemplary e-commerce strategy, problems can still arise.
Sources of such problems include:
Failure to understand customers, why they buy and how they buy. Even a product with
a sound value proposition can fail if producers and retailers do not understand
customer habits, expectations, and motivations. E-commerce could potentially mitigate
this potential problem with proactive and focused marketing research, just as traditional
retailers may do.
Failure to consider the competitive situation. One may have the will to construct
a viable book e-tailing business model, but lack the capability to compete with
Amazon.com.
Inability to predict environmental reaction. What will competitors do? Will they
introduce competitive brands or competitive web sites? Will they supplement their
service offerings? Will they try to sabotage a competitor's site? Will price wars
break out? What will the government do? Research into competitors, industries and
markets may mitigate some consequences here, just as in non-electronic commerce.
Over-estimation of resource competence. Can staff, hardware, software, and processes
handle the proposed strategy? Have e-tailers failed to develop employee and management
skills? These issues may call for thorough resource planning and employee training.
Failure to coordinate. If existing reporting and control relationships do not suffice,
one can move towards a flat, accountable, and flexible organizational structure,
which may or may not aid coordination.
Failure to obtain senior management commitment. This often results in a failure
to gain sufficient corporate resources to accomplish a task. It may help to get
top management involved right from the start.
Failure to obtain employee commitment. If planners do not explain their strategy
well to employees, or fail to give employees the whole picture, then training and
setting up incentives for workers to embrace the strategy may assist.
Under-estimation of time requirements. Setting up an e-commerce venture can take
considerable time and money, and failure to understand the timing and sequencing
of tasks can lead to significant cost overruns. Basic project planning, critical
path, critical chain, or PERT analysis may mitigate such failings. Profitability
may have to wait for the achievement of market share.
Failure to follow a plan. Poor follow-through after the initial planning, and insufficient
tracking of progress against a plan can result in problems. One may mitigate such
problems with standard tools: benchmarking, milestones, variance tracking, and penalties
and rewards for variances.
Becoming the victim of organized crime. Many syndicates have caught on to the potential
of the Internet as a new revenue stream. Two main methods are as follows: (1) Using
identity theft techniques like phishing to order expensive goods and bill them to
some innocent person, then liquidating the goods for quick cash; (2) Extortion by
using a network of compromised "zombie" computers to engage in distributed denial
of service attacks against the target Web site until it starts paying protection
money.
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