Conducting a Review of Relevant Literature

Transforming to E-commerce Strategy [Name] [Institution] [Date] Research Topic: Transforming to E-commerce Strategy Brief description of the topic Electronic commerce is playing an integral role in transforming the way customers buy goods and services. It makes information on products and markets as a whole readily available and accessible. It also increases price transparency enabling customers to make appropriate purchasing decisions. The internet has evolved into the most effective business channel, and it has lowered the costs of global communication, easing up business operations. Currently, E-commerce is a critical factor for competitiveness and productivity growth. Companies across all countries are increasingly adopting the use of internet to execute business transactions. Justification of the research topic This topic is worthy researching for a number of reasons. By conducting research on this topic, more information and insight on the implementation of E-commerce strategy will be available to supplement the already documented information. Research on the topic will also provide an opportunity to review the benefits, and deficiencies if any of implementing E-commerce. Another reason for selecting this topic is its relevancy, and global importance in ensuring effectiveness in all business transactions. Identification of variables The rise in E-commerce success has been an issue of interest to many experts in the sector of business. In this study, customer satisfaction will be used as a dependent variable and E-commerce will be the independent variable. Research questions (RQs) RQ1: To what extend will the adoption of E-commerce influence the way business transactions are carried out in various companies? RQ2: Which dimensions of transformation, and which clusters within these dimensions, are essential in determining E-commerce value outcomes? RQ3: What challenges if any will deter the adoption of E-commerce? RQ4: Which E-commerce approaches are currently available, and how do they work in the process of adopting E-commerce? RQ5: How will transformation to E-commerce affect customer satisfaction? RQ6: What are the pros and cons of adopting E-commerce? Literature review E-commerce in all aspects of doing business is growing day by day this has provided the opportunity for any industry to groom and grow. Due to great advancement technology and innovations in information technology, ecommerce has emerged crucial in all the industries and this has prompted companies to move towards e-business through websites, internet and different online software and applications. Even though there are several positive factors that encourage the use of ecommerce in carrying out business in this digital age, moving from traditional way of business to ecommerce have had some challenges and some factors standout as barriers in implementing this strategy. There are several advantages in adopting ecommerce strategy as there are challenges, but the net effect of using the strategy is positive. One of the main challenges is converting the traditional buyers to ecommerce buyers. Business industry as a whole is one of the back bones of any economy in developed, developing and underdeveloped nations and is one of the main sources of foreign exchange. The use of internet is growing day by day as per the International Telecommunication (2009), over 2 billion people will be online by 2012. Hence the use of internet would be an effective tool to connect different buyers and sellers all over the world and also the best channel to promote and open up new opportunities. E-commerce is defined as the act of buying or selling, or exchanging products or services and information across a computer network including the internet (Turbma et al, 2000) As per Fazlollahi (2002), there are various advantages of using ecommerce in business development roll out and general market awareness as it is fast, easy to access to various clients globally and also to be updated on the ever changing customer needs and products development. More so this strategic has been forecasted to generate more income to the users as the general cost of doing business would be reduced greatly. However it has some limitations as some of the information posted on the web may not be true, outdated, portrayed and there has been rising cases of online fraud witnessed over the years. In a nutshell, due to the overwhelming advantages of using ecommerce in conducting business across different divide, it is very essential for any business going concern to integrate ecommerce in it strategy. Despite some recent setbacks in internet based transaction, the dollar value of the electronic commerce has been rising at an unprecedented rate. In view of the consumer -to business transactions, the amount of money spent by online business doing has been on tripling trend over the years and is expected to hit USS$200 by 2013 while the business to business sale is projected to reach 2.6 trillion by 2013. These opportunities together with the ever advancing computing technology enable IT savvy companies to gain tremendous efficiency in their operations, customization and information based products and services. More and more business ventures either multinationals conglomerates, continental firms and even small to medium size businesses sees ecommerce initiatives as offering alternative strategies that transcends the normal operations. This study proposes that ecommerce initiatives are important strategies and firms should embrace them so as to enhance the level of consumer satisfaction in terms of service delivery and quality of their products. Any given firm`s management who would have embraced strong ecommerce initiatives and strong market orientation would have an upper hand to their counterparts in terms of market share and competitiveness(May, 2000). The emergence of ecommerce has brought in new and fundamental changes in the way that business is being conducted. These changes have brought in a paradigm shift on how the enterprise holders create and acquire wealth and create shareholder value in the business going concern. The availability and easy access to a myriad of communication and computing technology that provide a the best platform for the implementation of ecommerce initiatives allows organizations to streamline their business processes, improve on their customer service delivery and offer digital products and services. Since the advent of the World Wide Web, the optic fiber and cloud computing, these has brought great shift in the fundamentals` of doing business. This shift in the marketing fundamentals has generated the driving force that is making it inevitable for most firms to fully embrace ecommerce in doing their daily business activities. However as pointed out earlier, the road to success in ecommerce is littered with failed initiative so it would be very prudent for the initiators to proceed with a high level of caution and integrity. A good example can be illustrated by the plunge of share prices by dot com companies which sent the tech-savvy NASDAQ into free fall, down over the record high of 70% gained in 2004. Though an economic bubble was apparently likely, one thing was undoubtedly clear, most firms who relied entirely on internet pure plays would not find profitable sustainability by operating solely as ecommerce entity simply by outshining in management of information, technology and the consumer behavior. Similarly large corporation that viewed ecommerce as a standalone appendage to their business strategy would be less likely to gain grounds in this endeavor. Therefore it is highly recommendable that firms should clearly understand and focus their ecommerce strategies as integral part of their strategic objectives nothing less nothing more. In addition, it is highly probable that firms that careful evaluate their customer base, their needs and expectations as an integral part of their strategically thinking would reap more through this initiative. At this juncture we can deduce that commerce is bringing various opportunities in the business world. Many industries have had the opportunity in adopting and fully integrating ecommerce into their business strategies and the few who have lagged behind are on the way to adopting these strategies so as and improve on their service delivery. These developments have had great impact on the customer behavior and the industry as a whole (Mamaghain, 2000). The prime focus of this study is to find out the impact and challenges of ecommerce in enhancing customer satisfaction in various industries and reviewing it through different business journals. Through the journals the review would try to show any business venture would benefit if they fully integrate ecommerce in their marketing initiatives, and what are the customer`s perceptions and expectation on those companies that embraces ecommerce. Many researchers and scholars have done a lot of research and hypothesis findings on ecommerce in the business world. Many of the researches have had mixed outcome, for a number of the researches have pointed out the positive impacts of adopting ecommerce, the challenges faced in the process of conducting ecommerce and the barriers of ecommerce in doing business. As per Epstein, ecommerce application in the business arena is continuousl...