The Web does offer a new medium by which vendors can bring their goods and services to the market. Though there are many accounts that describe the business models evident on the Web, there are no definitive and wholly consistent frameworks. Some base their definitions on revenue streams, a sub-set that includes advertising, subscription, pay-per-view and transaction (and combinations thereof). Amazon, for example, sells books on which it makes revenue per book sold, and also carries advertising, generally for complementary products and services. Thus if you were to buy a travel book, for example, you might also be linked to holiday companies that offer trips to the book's destination.

Others define models by function. One comprehensive taxonomy is provided by Paul Timmers, who, whilst focusing on B2B e-Commerce, cites eleven different business models. These are not mutually exclusive, and through them, he argues, a further set of marketing models can be pursued. The majority of these models, he asserts, are not inherent innovations but merely manifestations of business models existing in the 'off-line' world. Thus an 'e-shop' is merely a shop that uses electronic means of marketing. However, by contrasting degree of innovation with level of functional integration Timmers highlights models that would be unfeasible without the level of electronic mediation offered by the Internet and World Wide Web. These include 'Value-chain integrators', which are 'critically dependent on information technology for letting information flow across networks and creating added value from integrating these information flows' (Timmers 2000:41-2) and other models such as 'third-party market places', 'collaboration platforms' and 'virtual business communities'.

The promise of a new business model, held out by B2C, has not lived up to expectations. Expectations of the much larger B2B sector as a set of new and large profitable opportunities remain unfulfilled. Many standardized financial products were traded profitably in real time by electronic media before Internet access. In developing new business models based...

For computer manufacturers like Dell, the Internet provides a very good global marketing application. Similarly, for businesses like low-cost airlines, the transaction costs advantages of Internet transactions are imperative. There are now greater possibilities for e-Learning as a new business model, as universities and other education providers around the world develop strategic alliances with international publishing companies and telcos. It opens up the prospect of their buildings and facilities becoming twenty-four-hour assets. However, strategic alliances are notoriously unstable and believing that technology of itself will transform the education world and the learning environment is raven with the same dangers experienced by the disciples of the dotcom hype. It is management and product innovation, and the delivering technology, that will be the basis of new business models in e-Commerce and not the technology itself.
Conclusion

The business environment for e-Commerce may look less promising in the global recessionary environment as the new century moves into the middle of its first decade. However, if the lessons of the failure of the new economy to mature, the dotcom to dot-bomb implosion and the stock madness are learned, then the Internet and associated media may be part of new business models. This will depend on getting the direction of causality. Three and a half centuries after the claim that supply creates its own demand was first falsely mooted, technology does not create its own business model. This is the fundamental lesson to be derived from the business environment for e-Commerce.

Resources

Economist (1999) 'You'll never walk alone', Survey Business and the Internet, 26 June.

Parker, R. (2000) Relationship Marketing on the Internet, Holbrook: Adams Media.

Timmers, P. (2000) Electronic Commerce: Strategies and Models for Business-to-business Trading, New York: Wiley.

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