[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

e-Business Strategies for Virtual Organizations
10
Planning and managing such systems requires an integrated
multi-dimensional approach across the e-business and the
development of new business process models.
1.5.1 e-business impact
While it captures public attention, the use of electronic tools and
internet technologies to market to end users (business-toconsumers,
or B2C trading) is in its infancy. This form of
e-business still constitutes a very small proportion of the total
economy, whichever way it is measured. Recent figures from the
US Department of Commerce show that for the third quarter of
2000, online retail sales in the USA amounted to US$6.373
billion. This represented only 0.78% of total retail sales. Thus
whatever the significance of e-commerce, it is not significant
because of the size of the phenomenon. Furthermore, in terms of
remote shopping, we have had TV shopping and catalogue
shopping well before the turn of the century, but it could be
argued that these forms of retailing, although similar to Internetbased
retailing, captured public imagination and media attention
much less than online retailing. Just why this is the case is
not easy to pin down, but computers have always been seen as
a modern or avant-garde technology. Professional investors’ and
venture capitalists’ imaginations have also, many would argue,
been captured by the new e-commerce possibilities. So many
spectators of this phenomenon have watched with some
amazement as investment dollars have poured into the new
‘dot-coms’ or Internet-based retailers and service providers,
even as these companies continue to make not solid profits, but
steady losses. After several years of hype and gravity-defying
stock prices, this particular unreal strand of the ‘new economy’
seems to be taking a sudden and stern correction toward reality
and sobriety. In fact, at the beginning of the year 2001, the
question is whether the reaction to the ‘dot-com’ excesses of the
so-called ‘new economy’ will in fact be an overcorrection which
punishes not only lacklustre dot-coms with little or no business
performance, but also some apparently healthy and indeed
innovative technology-based firms.
It is from the e-commerce phenomenon that much of the
language and emotion underpinning the idea of the ‘new
economy’ originates. The ‘virtual’ or online business with no
investment in bricks and mortar buildings and storefronts has
seemingly captured the imagination of the public and investors
alike. Indeed, so strong is the link, in the public and professional