BUSS 907: Electronic Commerce

There will be no lecture or tutorial on Wednesday, Sept. 5th

CHANGE OF CLASS TIME: From Week 2, BUSS907 lectures will be held on Wednesdays between 6:30 and 8:30pm and tutorials between 8:30 and 9:30pm. Please send email to the instructor if these new times cause problems with class timetable conflicts.

Lecture content outlines and pointers to web resources:

• Lecture 1: We discussed the basics of e-commerce. Some websites that you should regularly look at for e-commerce business news:
  • Fortune
  • Forbes
  • The Industry Standard
  • Upside
  • Redherring
• Lecture 2: We discussed the basics of B2C e-commerce, specifically e-retailing.
• Lecture 3: There was a guest lecture by Hui-Ling Wang on B2B e-commerce. Hardcopies of her presentation were distributed in class.
  Required readings:
  • Kaplan, S. and M. Sawhney, "B2B Business Hubs: Towards a Taxonomy of Business Models", December 1999.
  • Mohanbir Sawhney and Steven Kaplan, "Let's Get Vertical"
• Lecture 4: There was a guest lecture by Dr. Rodney Clarke. His presentation is available here. We also discussed various B2B business models.
  Required readings:
  • Mitra Sarkar, et al., "Intermediaries and Cybermediaries",, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Special Issue on Electronic Commerce, Vol. 1, No. 3.
• Lecture 5:We discussed supply chain management and its relation to B2B e-commerce. The lecture is available here.
  Recommended readings:
  • This presentation and this are worth looking at.
  • An introductory article on supply chain management.
• Lecture 6:We discussed agent technology and its applications to e-commerce. The lecture is available at here.
  Recommended readings:
  • An article on practical applications of agent technology.
  • An article on agent-mediated electronic commerce.
• Lecture 7:We discussed new web markup standards such as XML and the emergence of the semantic web. The lecture is available here.
  Recommended readings:
  • An introductory article on the semantic web.
  • An article on agents in the semantic web.
• Lecture 8:We discussed security and electronic payment systems. Refer to the textbook site for the lecture transparencies.
• Lecture 9:We discussed a classification of e-commerce business models. The lecture is available here.
• Lecture 10:We discussed knowledge management (KM), customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence in the context of e-commerce.
• Lecture 11:We discussed a variety of auction models. The lecture is available here.
• Lectures 12 and 13:These were devoted to group presentations for Project 2.

Tutorials:

• Tutorial 1:We discussed B2C e-commerce in the context several specific cases. The following case studies from the Stanford Graduate School of Business are required readings:
  • Nike Channel Conflict
  • Gap.com
  Both of these case studies are available from the Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Electronic Business and Commerce website.
• Tutorial 2:With the instructor absent, the tutorial slot will involve a continuation of one of the guest lectures.
• Tutorial 3:To prepare for this tutorial read the following Stanford e-commerce cases available at the link above:
  • QRS Corporation
  • SAP and the online procurement market
  • Tradeweave

Subject Outline

Procedures

Project 1 Guidelines

Project 2 Guidelines

Textbook website (also contains some powerpoint presentations).