Business-to-Consumer Practices in Electronic Commerce

The innovative electronic commerce practices of Internet companies are openly discussed and carefully scrutinized. A great deal of information describing their use of the WorldWide Web is available. At the same time, very little information has been assembled to describe the manner in which well-established public corporations are engaging in electronic commerce through their Internet sites. This paper reports a field study in which the WorldWide Web- based electronic commerce practices of 100 public U.S. corporations were examined over a six-month period. The findings reveal that while a large portion of the companies participate in business-to-consumer electronic commerce, only a small segment capitalizes on the potential through the commerce models they have deployed.