BIS 322

INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROJECT

STUDENT NAME: GIDEON AKINTOMIWA OGUNLEYE STUDENT NUMBER: M00426634 SUPERVISOR: DAMING SHI TITLE: DEVELOPMENT OF AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE FOR AN AUTOMOBILE COMPANY (AUTOWORLD)

TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTERS ACKNOWLEGEMENT. 1 INTRODUCTION 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS. WHAT IS E-COMMERCE. E-COMMERCE FRAMEWORK. E-COMMERCE AS A BUSINESS TOOL. 2.2 E-COMMERCE APPLICATIONS.. 2.3 E-COMMERCE SYSTEM: CASE STUDIES.. 2.4 ADVANTAGES OF USING E-COMMERCE FROM AN ORGANIZATIONS PERSPECTIVE. FROM A CONSUMERS PERSPECTIVE.. 2.5 TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES.. SECURITY.. TECHNOLOGICAL COMPONENTS.. NETWORK TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT SYSTEMS............. 2.6 POLICY ISSUES. TAXATION ISSUES.. PRIVACY ISSUES LEGAL 2.7 STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS 2.8 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.. PAGES

2.9 SYSTEM DEVELPOMENT LIFE CYCLE. 2.10 CONCLUSION.. 3 REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS AUTOWORLD BACKGROUND. REVIEW OF CURRENT SYSTEMS

4 DESIGN..................................................... 4.1 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS. 4.2 SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS. 4.3 TYPES OF DATABASE MODELS. [OOD]. [RDBMS] [ORDBMS] DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DATABASE MODELS. SELECTED DATABASE DESIGN MODEL. 4.4 IMPLEMENTATION TOOLS. PHP OVER ASP.NET MYSQL OVER SQL SERVER, ACCESS, AND ORACLE.. DREAMWEAVER OVER FRONT PAGE JQUERY. 4.5 DATA MODELLING.. 5 TESTING AND EVALUATION. 6 CONCLUSION............... APPENDIX............... REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION The information age and electronic business are evolving so rapidly, that the past few years has seen an increasing growth of interest in distributed systems which would address the business needs of companies, primarily the technologies employed in the internet. Many companies are changing the way they do business because of the internets influence in creating e-services that has been revolutionary for providers and customers, and resent surveys on e-commerce sites (ELECTRONIC COMMERCE) confirm the use of World Wide Web for shopping and online retailing. The reasons for these have mostly been attributed to factors such as convenience, time saving, and absence of sales pressure amongst others. Electronic Commerce (e commerce) has no universal accepted definition; e-commerce has been defined in different ways because each definition depends on the context objective and the research objective of the author. In general term, it could be defined as The process of buying and selling products over the internet. However, the definitions given by kalakota and Whingston ( Kalakota, Whinston, 1997) are based on the following: From a communications perspective, EC is the delivery of information, products/services, or payments via telephone lines, computer networks, or any other means. From a business process perspective, EC is the application of technology toward the automation of business transactions and workflow. From a service perspective, EC is a tool that addresses the desire of firms, consumers, and management to cut service costs while improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of service delivery. From an online perspective, EC provides the capability of buying and selling products and information on the Internet and other online services.

E-Commerce (EC) is so essential to the survival of most businesses in this information age that companies, retail stores and organizations cannot afford to ignore the alternative of E-Commerce (EC) to traditional marketing. The focus of this project is to design a functional online store for an automobile retail company (Auto World) that deals in classic and customized cars.

AIMS develop a database for its products and customers To design and develop a demonstration website for its online retailing and services OBJECTIVES Meet up with the manager to discuss their requirements. Determine What products and/or services does the business offer, the categories of products/services, approximate number of product titles in each category, what (approximately) is the product information that the customers will be able to access to. What is the target audience of the web site: general public, or people who are interested in specialized products? Will the web site provide membership, and if yes, which services will be restricted to members only. If there is a membership, what information will the customers need to provide to get a membership What kind of payment would you accept: major credit cards online, major credit cards by phone, PayPal, checks, and electronic cash/checks? Seek the management approval for the revised requirement Transfer data from the company records and create a normalized database Identify the specifications for the website and the design processes that might be involved Develop a demonstration website for the company.

METHODOLOGY In this project, a demonstration E-commerce website will be designed and developed in other to test its functionality. The website will be designed and developed to meet the w3c standards (World Wide Web Consortium).

DELIVERABLES DATES MILESTONES DELIVERABLES Project Proposal:

Background check of title, aims and objectives and so on. Intermediate Delivery Final Report SCHEDULE TASK Choose a topic Brainstorm DELIVERABLES Title Initial gathering of information Initial Specifications Approval Description Detailed research Solving problems Check if on right track Field trail Feedbacks and improvement References Report 2days 2weeks EFFORT

Outline field trials Seek supervisors approval Research Analyze Build prototype Supervisor Write on the field trial Supervisor

2weeks 1day 2weeks 1 week 4weeks 1day 2weeks 2weeks

Citation and references Prepare report and presentation RESOURCES

1week 4weeks

The softwares that would be used in the design and developmental stages of this project include: Dreamweaver: This will be the html editor for designing the layout of the web pages

 Photoshop: This would be used to design the web graphics, and editing the images that would be displayed on the web pages XAMP: This contains the web server, and SQL that would be used to add dynamic functions to the website The programming languages that would be used include: HTML: For coding the web pages CSS: This would be used to style the overall look of the web pages JQUERY: This would be used alongside with the CSS to build some user interactivity in the web pages PHP: This would be used in the back-end development of the website and server side scripting. MySQL: This would be used to build the database and write the database queries.

LITERATURE REVIEW The internet and its related technologies have come to be an integral part of our daily lives and this has partly led to the emergence of E-commerce being a significant component for business strategies and economic development. The use of information technology in business has created a revolution in the relationship between

organizations and their customers. IT in business has enormously enhanced productivity, facilitated consumer participation, and reduced cost of doing business. This literature review aims to delve into the concepts of Electronic commerce, its many uses as a significant strategic tool, the issues related with its used and future innovations in the system. 2.1 CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS 2.1.1 WHAT IS E-COMMERCE Electronic Commerce (EC) generally refers to a broad range of internet related business activities of products and services (Rosen, 2002). It is often associated with the buying and selling of products and services online, however these definitions are not solid to encompass the enormous nature of this digital phenomenon. The definition of Zwass (1996,P.3) gives a more intuitive definition by stating that Electronic commerce (E commerce) is sharing business information, maintaining business relationships, and conducting business transactions by means of telecommunications networks . Distinction between E-Commerce and E-Business While most organization engage the use of e-commerce and e-business side by side, they are very much two distinctive concepts. In the area of EC, information communication technology (ICT) is often used for inter-organization transactions referred to as Business-2-Business (B2B) transactions, and Business-2-Customer (B2C) transactions. On the other hand, E-Business technologies are used to enhance business as a whole. It often includes any process that an organization, be it profit, non-profit or governmental establishments conduct over a computer network. There are three main features that are enhanced in e-business processes, and they include: The business process The Consumer-Focused Process The Internal-Management Process Types of E-Commerce There are five major types of Electronic Commerce, and they include business-tobusiness (B2B); business-to-Consumer (B2C); business-to-government (B2G); consumerto-consumer (C2C); and mobile commerce (m-commerce)

 B2B: This is the e-commerce between companies and organizations, it deals with the relationships among businesses B2C: This is the EC between Organizations and their consumers. It involves customers gathering information or purchasing goods and services over the internet. This is the earliest form of E-Commerce as its origins could be traced back to the days of online retailing (Kalakota, Robinson, 2003). B2G: This is generally defined as the commerce between companies and the general sector. It involves the use of the internet for licensing procedures and any other type of government related operations. C2C: This in simple terms is the commerce between private individuals or consumers. This type of commerce is carried out in online market places and auction sites. mCOMMERCE: General known as mobile commerce, is the buying of goods and services through wireless devise technologies.

2.1.2 E-COMMERCE FRAMEWORK The best way to analyze Electronic Commerce Framework is to visualize the comprised systems in hierarchical order made up of different levels, with each lower level delivering a well-defined support for the levels above it. The table below is based on the work of Zwass (1996, P.4):

LEVEL 7

FUNCTION Products and Structures Electronic Marketplace and Electronic hierarchies

EXAMPLE

Products and Systems

Electronic auctions, brokerages, dealerships, and direct-search markets Interorganizational supply-chain management Remote Consumer Services (Shopping,

Banking, Stock Broking) Infotainment-on-demand (fee-based content sites, educational offerings) Supplier-consumer linkages On-line marketing Electronic benefit systems Intranet-based collaboration systems Services 5 Electronic catalogs/directories, smart agents E-money, digital authentication services Digital libraries, copyright- protection services Traffic auditing Smart-card systems Secure messaging EDI, E-mail, EFT INFRASTRUCTURE Hypermedia/multimedia object management Public and private communication utilities Wide-area telecommunications infrastructure World Wide Web with Java Internet and value-added networks (VANs) Guided- and wireless-media networks Enabling services

4 3 2 1

According to Zwass (1996, p.5) in this framework, E-Commerce consists of three metalevels which are: Infrastructure: This is made up of the hardware, softwares, databases, and telecommunications that together deliver the full functionality of the World Wide Web over the Internet, or the support of EDI and any other forms of messaging over the Internet or over networks Services: This comprises of messaging and a variety of services enabling the finding and delivery of information, and as well as negotiation, transacting business, and settlement Products and Structures: This area provides direct provision of commercial services to consumers and business partners, intra-organizational information

sharing and collaboration, and organization of electronic markets and supply chains.

2.1.4 E-COMMERCE AS A BUSINESS TOOL Over the past decade, Electronic commerce has evolved from a tool for viewing and browsing through online catalogues to a fully functional tool for making strategic business decisions. It now largely involves more than just buying and selling, it scope now surrounds all sorts of pre-sale and post-sale efforts, as well as others strategic activities such as market research, generation of sales leads, customer support, knowledge distribution, public relation, recruitments etc. these activities play a huge role in strategic planning, The organized design and performance of an organizations systems (Applegate, et al, 1996). E-Commerce has significantly changed the way organizations now do business; it has given them the opportunity to streamline most if not all of their business processes, enhances their consumer related services, and effectively enabled them to offer their products and services digitally to millions of people around the world. As a result of this, firms have adopted Electronic-Commerce as an integral part of their strategic objectives, and make use of its comprehensive system to evaluate their consumer and competitive base (Chang, et al, 2003.) E-Commerce for Attracting and retaining customers An attractor is a Web site that has the potential to attract and interact with a large number of visiting customers on the internet. And although this is a very strong factor, a website must also have the necessary facilities to enable its power of attraction to last for a long time. This strength of attracting must rely on the ability of the website to interact with consumers on the very first visit, and thereafter (Watson, et al, 2000). Using E-Commerce for competitive advantage

Achieving an adaptive chain of supply in an organization means a fundamental change in the companys internal processes. And EC systems help organizations to leverage the increased visibility within and across organizations in order to achieve a change in its supply chain processes (Loshin, Vacca, 2006.) 2.2 E-COMMERCE APPLICATIONS 2.2.1 Inter-Organizational Systems (IOS) These are systems that support the flow of information between firms. The implementations of these systems are intended to make the user firms competitive and enlarge their strategic options by identifying factors such as: (a) Focused market (B) Support for product differentiation (C) A reduction in overall cost (Potter, Miller, 1985). There are different types of Inter-Organizational Systems (IOS), but the major system that has gained a whole lot of attention in recent years is the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) which has led to its adoption by a lot of organizations (Riggins, Mukhopadhyay, 1994.). EDI is acclaimed to be the new frontier of communication technology. It generally involves the automated of business documents between organizations. In to the words of Henson and Hill (Henson, Hill, 1989, P405) Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the movement of business documents electronically between or within firms (including their agents or intermediaries) in a structured, machineretrievable, data format that permits data to be transferred, without rekeying, from a business application in one location to a business application in another location.

2.2.2 Electronic Payment Systems (EPS) Electronic payment systems are used to make payments for goods and services over an electronic network such as the internet. These technologies of payment, rather than the technologies of connection are the main triggers for the expansion of E-Commerce (Birch, 1997). Commerce involves the exchange of money for goods and services between a payer and a payee. The various types of electronic payment systems include: Credit Cards Digital Wallets

E-Cash Mobile Payment

Electronic Payment Systems enables customers to pay for their goods and services online by making use of integrated hardware and software systems. Its main objective is to increase efficiency, improve security, and enhance consumers convenience.

2.2.2 Financial Services Various Financial services are achieved through the use of E-Commerce, and they include: (a) Online Stock Trading (b) Online Banking. 2.2.3 Retailing Electronic Retailing, often described as E-Tailing refers to the selling of goods and services over the internet. Although it could be attributed to Business To Business (B-2B) transactions, it is mostly synonymous to the Business to Customer (B-2-C) aspects of E-Commerce. 2.2.4 Education and Training With the advent of on-line education and virtual classrooms, the educational instructions are being paid for and attended electronically without students having to travel long distances from home. 2.2.5 Marketing and Advertising The application of E-Commerce to the area of marketing and advertising includes: decimation of products, brand management, sales information of Products, and product announcements through the medium of the Internet. 2.2.6 Online Publishing E-Commerce is applicable to the area of publishing through the electronic delivery of newspapers, Magazines, news, Sales of electronic books (E-Books), and any other related information over the internet. 2.2.7 Auctions Electronic Auction auctions are very similar to the traditional auctions weve all come to know about, but the difference is that this type of auction is done over the internet, which is largely achieved through the information technology of E-Commerce.

E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS: CASE STUDIES

2.3 ADVANTAGES OF E-COMMERCE Although the most notable advantage of electronic commerce is that it reduces the cost of doing business for organization and gives them the opportunity to reach a global market, it also has a lot of other advantages for Organizations and Consumers from their own unique perspectives. 2.3.1 FROM AN ORGANIZATIONS PERSPECTIVE Reduction in the cost of inventory management E-Commerce allows the suppliers of goods to manage their inventory by enabling them to make use of web based management systems for the automation of their inventory management process. Ability to reach a global market With millions of people worldwide connected to the internet, EC gives organizations to ability to reach a global market thereby increasing their sales. Ability to monitor consumer interest in their products Companies can have accurate assessments of how consumers respond to their products, and gives them a view of consumer interest. Reduction in labor cost The Automation of online store fronts reduces the cost of labor for the organization that engages in the use of e-commerce. Reduction in advertising cost With the help of software technologies over the internet, the cost of updating adverts is greatly reduces because companies dont have to waste a whole lot of for hard copy prints and billboard advert placements. 2.3.2 FROM A CONSUMERS PERSPECTIVE A broad range of choices

E-Commerce gives consumers a wider range of options when it comes to choosing needed products and services need from a variety of the companies that offer these products. Products can be purchased remotely With the help of wireless technologies such as mobile phones and wireless devices, consumers can access the products and services from anywhere conveniently. Consumers have greater control A greater control is given to the consumers in terms of the products and services, as ECommerce provides an easy to use ordering system that enables them to order products they really need. Ability to compare prizes By being able to compare the prices of product and services from the comfort of their homes without feeling any sort of pressure, enables consumers to make more accurate decisions on what they need. Time Saving Due to the integration of Electronic Payment Systems (EPS) with E-Commerce, consumers dont have to waste time going to their banks to make money transfers or withdraw money to pay for goods and services.

2.3 TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES 2.3.1 Security Security as it seems, is one of the major challenges faced by organization that engage in the use of Electronic Commerce for their business activities. When users access the internet, information being sent could be accessed by anyone from anywhere around the world. There is also a risk of viruses, the corruption of and theft of data, and the apt possibility of fraud because of the difficulty of accountability of the use of services provided through the internet (Aldridge, White, Forcht, 1997).

Communication risk is a big threat to trading partners in the area of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and internal audits and the control in a company have can do so little when it comes to reducing this risk. Lets take for instance a scenario in which a company orders 200 floppy disk drives from its supplier, but due to some communication problems (e.g message tampering), the company somehow receives 200 computers instead. If the trading agreement between the companies involves the two products, then the system has little or no reason to suspect that the transmission has been compromised (Banerjee, Golhar, 1995). The E-Commerce technology depends solely on The World Wide Web (WWW) and the Internet as a network, and these are decentralized systems spread out across millions of computers around the world. Each of these individual computers has its own security procedures and password or a lack of both. And as its been so often noted that the internet is only as strong as its weakest link, so any intruder who gains access to any part of the it can equally gain access to much of the rest of the system (Forcht, Fore, 1995). 2.3.2 Technological Components This consist of various internet technologies like XML, mobile agents etc. that would help e-commerce transaction become possible. These days web services has given people access to a lot of information and services, but this information is often delivered through an hypertext language known as (HTML) which has only made it readable through the human beings eye. Therefore software agents such as the few mentioned above often have difficulties reading this information because it is not written in a systematic format. Clever programmers would have to work around HTMLs limitations by the use of softwares and propriety tags of which the intended task would be to pelt web pages for the extraction of its contents. But rather unfortunately, such back end approaches do not often scale, because the use of those tags would require browser plugins and the pelting approach would need a customized script for each website(Glushko, Tenenbaum, Meltzer, 1999.) The need for the access to elaborate dynamic and heterogeneous information sources distributed over the Internet has called for new models for application design and development. Mobile agents promote the design of applications where agents roam through Internet sites to locally access and elaborate information and resources, with the possibility of co-operating with each other. Applications on the internet are made up of network-aware entities which have the capability of dynamically changing their execution environment. This change of perspective has led to several advantages in

terms of saved dynamicity, bandwidth, and reliability (Waldo, et al., 1997). While several of this mobile agent systems and programming environments have kept on appearing, several issues would still need to be analyzed and addressed before the mobile agent gains wide acceptance. And these issues include Heterogeneity, Integrity, and Dynamicity (Omicini, Zambonelli, 1998 ). 2.3.3 Network Technologies Like in the case many large-scale computing networks, the Internet has been characterized by the inefficiency of resource allocation and a consequent lack of a foreseeable performance levels. And while this phenomenal growth of EC indicates the advent of a digital economy, the many benefits of such an economy may remain unrealized in the absence of a Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee. The availability of High-bandwidth technologies alone cant ensure a predictable service quality; there also must be an adequate resource management. In the case of private networks, it is often a relatively easy case to combine economic principles with technology for the design of mechanisms to manage a network efficiently. How-ever, public networks have a set of unique characteristics that would require something more than just the adaptation of the tools of traditional economics. For instance, any centralized approach to the management of Internet resources would immediately be faced with an inherently decentralized design: a network of diverse, failure-prone networks that would vigorously reroute packets. These designs have served the purposes of ensuring a high degree of interoperability and sustainability. but Its innovations in open networking has also transformed the Internet from an academic and research network base into a substructure for global economic activity(Gupta, et al. 1997). 2.3.4 Support Systems While the Internet has gained a significant amount of attention of information systems practitioners, and researchers, online transaction processing support systems still take a huge share of business information systems. Although lots of Decision Support Systems (DSS) have been developed, they have failed to become mainstream products due to the limitations in their availability, applicability, and interoperability (Jeusfeld, Bui, 1997). The decision making processes of Decision Support systems (DSS) need to be monitored and prompted to ensure that the responses to many diverse events taking place are coordinated among the many different functions, and sequentially The systems would need to be able to draw upon and integrate communication and visualization aids to

build a collaborative understanding of what is happening; they would have to foster shared mental models among the management team. To achieve this set of task, the several DSS tools used in emergency management need would have to be embedding into system workflows. Moreover, such systems workflows cannot be hardwired. Rather they would have to be built upon flexible templates in order to ensure the specific character of any events need is met appropriately (Simon, 2007). 2.4 POLICY ISSUES 2.4.1 Taxation Issues The issues with international taxation in the area of Electronic Commerce is due to the fact that it is likely impossible to govern well when there is no international government structure in place thats able to create an appropriate structure to induce good behavior. Li (2003) in his literature provides a technical analysis of the Canadian Goods and Services Tax (GST) from the perspective of e-commerce and has made some suggestions in terms of reform. The anti-tax community and coalitions have a strong adversary in the National Governors Association. Most governments are worried that stores built with bricks are being jeopardized by the popularization of Internet Electronic Commerce, which is basically tax free. Its often being suggested that government tax policy offers a competitive advantage to Internet stores. Major retail stores built with bricks such as Wal-Mart are concerned that if left unresolved, the issue may gain much public resistance, thus making the taxing of e-commerce politically impossible (Raisinghani, Petty, 2009). The government has fought the issues of tax evasion for decades by asking banks and the Federal Reserves to record financial transactions and to report cash deposits of more than a specific amount. But the advent of internet based business and the combination of data-scrambling technology, electronic cash, and international communications, has created a loop hole that allows the tax-free buying and selling of goods and services via the Internet. Electronic cash seems to be is a major worry for government officials, and this is partly because it its transactions records are nearly impossible to track be and therefore a proper taxation system would be difficult to put in place (Munro, 1997). 2.4.2 Privacy Issues The extraordinary growth of the internet and its related tools represents the promise of a better, cheaper, and more efficient marketing, which is most beneficial in the area of electronic marketing, however very few marketers have fully put into consideration the

downside of this virtual marketing technology, because along with great potential often comes hidden legal risk. The legal issues a marketer may encounter when making use of this resource is highly significant and no marketer should venture into this new medium without putting into consideration social, ethical and legal issues (Richards, Jeff, 1997,p.319). When privacy is correlated with consumer activities taking place while making use of the electronic marketing technologies, privacy would usually be referred to as personal information and the invasion of privacy would be then be described as the unauthorized collection, disclosure, or other use of consumers personal information as a direct result of e- commerce transactions. Wang, Lee, And Wang (1998, p.64) described that the types of personal information that are involved in this area of privacy can be classified into two distinctive categories based on their individual nature: Static private information: this category of personal information is not expected to change dramatically over time, and it includes information such as referential information, historical financial information, health information, personal affiliations and beliefs, and personal documents. Dynamic personal information: this category includes information that changes dramatically over a period of time, but nevertheless can be collected and put through analysis in such a way that a uniquely informed individual profile can be generated. And this type of information includes activity history and activity content.

Privacy issues relating to consumer information is not a fairly new problem in the area of online marketing, the growth of complex and robust databases has resulted in companies having a huge amount of information available on their customers, and an array of data mining techniques are used on this database systems to evaluate statistics on consumers who are active spenders.

The uses of these new information technological tools have improved the opportunities for improved marketing techniques, and target marketing. However, this aspect of this profession faces ethical conflicts because the use of applications of this nature usually invades consumer privacy (Foxman and Kilcoyne,1993, p.106). 2.4.3 Legal Issues

The concerns of the government about privacy issues related marketing through Electronic Commerce and other related mediums often reflect the balance it must always seek between each competing right. The government seeks to ensure that the private lives of its citizens remain free from any unwanted interference. This theme of business applies to not only individual, but to business entities as well. However the use of information technology by marketers conflicts with the consumer rights to be free from unsolicited disturbances, and the marketers business right to be let alone to do business efficiently. As a result of this, it is said that governments responsibility in this privacy conflict has not been clearly separated (Foxman and Kilcoyne, 1993, p.108).

According to Hammon (cited in Richard, 1997,p.320) after the Lexis-Nexis database started selling personal information of U.S. citizens, consumers stormed their headquarters with complaints and demanded that their respective informations be deleted from their databases.

A majority of consumers have expressed a lot of concerns about the invasion of their privacy resulting from the collection and the use of their personal information by government agencies and corporate bodies. A Time Magazine Survey (cited in Foxman, E.R, and Kilcoyne, 1993, p.106) has found that 76% of consumers are very or somewhat concerned about this issues, while 93% feel that the companies that engage in this practices should be required to seek the consumers consent before doing so. 2.5 STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS Electronic Commerce is a phenomenon which no one expected to grow at the rate at which it changed the existing boundaries of business in the world as a whole. This growth actually has been dependent on key infrastructures in an economy which has resulted in some countries being well ahead, while most are catching up and other making a very slow progress (Dutta, 1997). The Strategic implications of Electronic commerce as an alternative means of doing business vary for different countries and it could be categorized into two very broad sections. Infrastructural Implications

The fast spread of information technologies has created a great appetite for new products and services that can be obtained immediately. To embrace these technological changes, leaders would need to recognize that increased spending of resources in the area of information technology is somewhat inevitable. While some countries have spent lots of money on projects to improve the state of Internet infrastructure (Quelch and Klein, 1996), other countries would need to reduce their trade barriers and implement relaxed policies to welcome foreign investment in order to propel their economies forward. Electronic-Commerce highly requires cooperation and flexibility among business partners operating regionally, nationally, and internationally. And conducting this type of business securely requires the establishment of standards in areas like bandwidth for communications network, information and data exchange, and security services (Trepper, 2000) Lots of countries, especially the developing ones, lack these standards. And Meeting the reliability and quality of such standards would largely depend on the implementation of advanced information technology by Internet service providers. Organizations that are used to having high quality Internet related services in their countries would often find it hard to adapt in foreign markets that have less equipped commercial infrastructure (Javalgi, Ramsey, 2001). Marketing and Distribution Implications The Internet has provided lots of benefits to producers and consumers by the elimination of intermediaries, a phenomenon is known as disintermediation. Turaban in his literature (Turaban et al, 2000, p. 65) states that: Traditional manufacturers have had to decide whether they want to transform to a full commitment to direct marketing, restructuring the current manufacturing and distribution system; or regard the electronic storefront as an additional channel of distribution. A similar strategic question applies to traditional retailers. A critical question to manufacturers and retailers is how to transform their existing distribution channels to satisfy customers most effectively at the minimum operating cost (Turaban et al., 2010, p. 65).

CONCLUSION

The fact that Electronic commerce and its related technologies has been able to significantly alter the nature of work and the internal operations of organizations over the few years, has really created a revolution in the very nature of conducting business. But the business incentive of Electronic commerce involves more than the just buying and selling of goods and services. It also entails all sorts of presale and post-sale activities, and a host of ancillary activities as well. These involves the new approach to marketing research, the generation of sales leads, advertising, purchasing and distribution of products, customer services and relationship, recruitment, public relations, business operations, production management, knowledge distribution, and financial transactions. All these tend to affect strategic planning, organizational design and the overall performance, the implementation of business laws, and taxation policies. Electronic Commerce has created a whole new arena in the area of business and delivering services, and its holds a lot of potential for the relationship between businesses and consumers as a whole. But its not uncommon for anything with enormous advantages as e-commerce not to have a degree of disadvantages as well, thats where the issue of balancing the beneficial uses of consumers data that are being collected in the area of e-marketing with the privacy rights of the consumers as well. Consumers feel the need to control how their personal information is being disclosed, and how the information collected will be put to use or if it will be further distributed. This essay is an outline of the issues involved ethically, legally and professionally, as well as the consumer privacy concerns. All these issues would need to be re-solved before e-commerce can truly achieve it functionality of being a global distribution alternative. REFERENCES ALDRIDGE, A., WHITE, M. and FORCHT, K., 1997. Security considerations of doing business via the Internet: cautions to be considered. Internet Research, 7(1), pp. 9-15. BANERJEE, S. and GOLHAR, D.Y., 1995. Security issues in the EDI environment. Information Management & Computer Security, 3(2), pp. 27-33. BIRCH, D., 1997. Real electronic commerce-smart cards on the superhighway. Internet Research, 7(2), pp. 116-119. CAMP, L., 1994. Privacy: From abstraction to applications. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 24(3), pp. 8-15.

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