E-Commerce, strategies and processes

The initiation and processing of business transactions over the internet, in addition to suitable marketing concepts, requires the reorganization of commercial processes and, if applicable, all-embracing strategic alliances between branches. In addition to this, powerful information and communication systems become very significant. In order to cope with the functions linked to the systems, there are a large range of proven concepts from field business management theory, information technology or information systems research. At the same time, e-commerce demonstrates a series of distinctive features that bring with them attractive challenges for IS research.

Although e-commerce can seem to focus superficially on the development of business over the internet, our approach is that it requires the integration and extensive automation of stock-related processes such as procurement, logistics and transactions. The technical support for processes of this kind requires systems that guarantee a high degree of reliability and integrity. Concepts must be constructed that allow close integration of the various information systems involved in an e-commerce transaction. Designing powerful e-commerce infrastructures is a demanding task requiring a sophisticated approach taking account of economic and software-engineering aspects. Within ECOMOD, a project funded by the German Research Foundation ("DFG"), we have developed a method that supports the design and maintenance of a flexible infrastructure for e-commerce.

E-commerce websites offer a huge range of products, and in the case of auction sites for example the selection is almost unlimited. For all these products to be managed by information systems they must be described meaningfully , and so catalogues, sometimes called "Internet Electronic Product Catalogs" (IEPC), have become fundamental components of trading sites. IEPCs are there to put "multimedia product representations" at the customer's disposal. However, tighter integration of the information systems involved in e-commerce processes requires conceptual models capable of describing many product types in a comprehensive way. For this purpose we design and evaluate generic and flexible object models.

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Dr. Carola Schauer

Dr., (geb. Lange)

Position:
Former Senior Academic Staff

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Publications

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  • Gulden, Jens: Semantic Support for Visual Analyses in Electronic Commerce Settings. In: Nah, Fiona Fui-Hoon; Tan, Chuan-Hoo (Ed.): Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI International 2016. Springer, New York 2016. CitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich; Lange, Carola: E-MEMO: A Method to support the Development of customized Electronic Commerce Systems. In: Information Systems and E-Business Management (ISeB), Vol 5 (2007) No 2, p. 93-116. doi:10.1007/s10257-006-0034-9CitationDetails

    In many industries structural change through E-Commerce is challenging firms to re-align their strategies as well as re-engineer their business processes with new competitive environments while taking advantage
    of technological opportunities. This article presents E-MEMO, a method for multi-perspective enterprise modelling with special emphasis on processes and technologies for E-Commerce. It serves to analyse and design corporate information systems that are balanced with a company’s E-Commerce strategy and its organisation. E-MEMO offers specific languages for modelling strategies, business processes, and related resources. In addition to that, it provides a library of reference models including strategy networks to guide strategic planning and models of business processes. In order to further support the implementation of information systems a transformation has been defined that allows for generating workflow schemata from business process models. Since design-oriented research is not predominant in the Information Systems field, the epistemological challenges of the chosen research approach are discussed, too.

  • Frank, Ulrich: Model-Driven Planning and Development of Infrastructures for E-Commerce. In: Wang, Shan; Yang, Dongqing; Tanaka, Katsumi (Ed.): Conceptual Modeling for Advanced Application Domains. Springer, 2004, p. 679-690. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-30466-1_62CitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich: E-MEMO: Referenzmodelle zur ökonomischen Realisierung leistungsfähiger Infrastrukturen für Electronic Commerce. In: Wirtschaftsinformatik, Vol 46 (2004) No 5, p. 373-381. doi:10.1007/BF03250950Full textCitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich; Lange, Carola: Corporate Strategies for Electronic Commerce - Stepwise refinement and mapping to generic business process models. Koblenz 2004. Full textCitationDetails
  • Lange, Carola; Frank, Ulrich: Ein Bezugsrahmen zur Verfeinerung und Umsetzung von Unternehmensstrategien für Electronic Commerce. Koblenz 2004. Full textCitationDetails
  • Lange, Carola: Developing Strategies for Electronic Commerce in Small and Medium Sized Companies - Guidelines for Managers. Arbeitsbericht Nr. 39. Instut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz 2003. Full textCitationDetails
  • Lange, Carola: Analyse und Entwicklung von Strategien für KMU im Electronic Commerce. 2003. Full textCitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich: Modeling Products for Versatile E-Commerce Platforms: Essential Requirements and Generic Design Alternatives. In: Mayr, H. (Ed.): Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Conceptual Modeling Approaches for E-Business (ECOMO). Springer, 2002. doi:10.1007/3-540-46140-X_34Full textCitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich: A Conceptual Foundation for Versatile E-Commerce Platforms. In: Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, Vol 2 (2002) No 2. CitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich; van Laak, Bodo: A Method for the Multi-Perspective Design of Versatile E-Business Systems. In: Ramsower, Regan; Windsor, John (Ed.): Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2002). 2002. Full textCitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich: Anwendungsnahe Standards für E-Business: Überblick über aktuelle Initiativen. In: Wirtschaftsinformatik, Vol 43 (2001) No 3, p. 283-293. CitationDetails
  • Rittgen, Peter: EMC - A Modeling Method for Developing Web-based Applications. In: Khosrowpour, Mehdi (Hrsg) (Ed.): IRMA Conference 2000. 2000, p. 135-140. CitationDetails
  • Rittgen, Peter: Paving the Road to Business Process Automation. In: Hansen, Hans Robert; Bichler, Martin; Mahrer, Harald (Hrsg) (Ed.): ECIS 2000 - 8th European Conference on Information Systems. 2000, p. 313-319. CitationDetails
  • Frank, Ulrich: Die Modellierung von Produkten für Handelsplattformen im Internet: Ein Ansatz auf der Basis von Metakonzepten. In: Jasper, Heinrich; Küng, Josef; Vossen, Gottfried (Ed.): Informationssysteme für E-Commerce: EMISA-2000. Universitätsverlag RudolfTrauner, 2000, p. 169-185. Full textCitationDetails