This paper examines the distinctive characteristics that set e-commerce apart from other technology-based selling strategies. It begins by outlining the foundational systems — pricing, catalog management, order management, and personalization — that underpin successful e-commerce platforms. The paper then analyzes how e-commerce uniquely enables the measurement and prediction of customer behavior through advanced analytics, supporting up-sell and cross-sell strategies. Finally, it considers theoretical frameworks that explain variation in e-commerce adoption, with particular attention to the role of personalization and content relevance in B2B contexts, where e-commerce sites serve as trust-building tools for prospective client relationships.
The fundamental structure of e-commerce relies heavily on system integration across pricing, web-based catalog management, quoting, order management, and personalization options that allow users to define how they want to interact with applications online. All of these integration points, taken together, form the foundation of successful e-commerce websites and portals (Su & Chuang, 2011). From an IT standpoint, all of these systems must deliver a consistent, reliable, and secure online presence that is available 24/7. Also implicit in e-commerce websites and portals is the need to earn and maintain the trust of users over the long term, translating browsing behavior into lasting customer loyalty (Sinclaire, Simon, & Wilkes, 2010).
What makes e-commerce unique compared to all other technology-based selling strategies is its capacity to build trust with customers over the long term (Sinclaire, Simon, & Wilkes, 2010). E-commerce has evolved into a combination of marketing, selling, and service strategies that focus on enhancing customer relationships online while simultaneously creating opportunities for companies to increase revenue through up-selling and cross-selling (Kubiak & Weichbroth, 2010).
The use of advanced analytics applications to analyze online behavior and predict the outcomes of specific promotions is also revolutionizing e-commerce today. No other selling channel can provide this level of measurement of customer behavior. Every prospect or customer activity can be tracked and measured within an e-commerce platform. This provides real-time updates on how effective specific promotional and marketing strategies are, offers insights into how each target audience is responding to a promotion or special sale, and establishes a basis for future forecasting. These three uses of analytics represent only a fraction of the many approaches companies are using to extract greater value from the behavioral data they capture online. The ability to quantify behavior and predict which strategies and personalization options will most quickly build trust is an emerging field of research — one that makes e-commerce the most distinctive selling channel available today (Sinclaire, Simon, & Wilkes, 2010).
"Adoption variation and B2B relationship-building strategies"
"Peer-reviewed sources supporting the analysis"
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