Week # 12 E-Commerce Strategy and Global EC

chapter 14 objectives:

Describe the strategic planning process.
Describe the purpose and content of a business plan.
Understand how e-commerce impacts the strategic planning process.
Understand how to formulate, justify, and prioritize EC applications.
Describe strategy implementation and assessment, including the use of metrics.
Evaluate the issues involved in global EC.
Analyze the impact of EC on small and medium-sized businesses.
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More and more businesses are going global when it comes to E-Commerce.
I think that this is an important issue and a critical factor when it comes to the highly competitive market of e-commerce. If geographical location comes out of the equasion - why not go global and expand business ?

Take a look at Ikea.com. From a small swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea has grown into a world wide business. Globalization plays a huge role in the expansion of
this company. In Israel, for example, the menu at the Ikea cafeteria offers Israeli food, the web site is designed in Hebrew with prices in local currency. These are just a couple of small examples that a company should consider when going global.

going global with your web site is a necessity for the future of your organization rather than an option.

With the advent of E-commerce, many in the world are able to compete in global markets regardless of language, and cultural barriers, physical distance and national boundaries since products, services, and transaction processes can be re-engineered to adjust to changing business environments. E-commerce has evolved through the basic E-mail and electronic data interchange of the past few years to the sophisticated Web based interactive systems today. What will happen in the future is left to our creative imagination and the potentials are very high. Globalization is bound to succeed in the world due to the enormous economic benefits that can be accrued by it. Internet and E-commerce which have been responsible for continuing gradual removal of barriers of language, culture and national boundaries will help globalization and accelerate international trade.