Internet Transactions and Physical Logistics: Conflict or Complementarity?

This paper argues that the whole company, and the market in which it operates, can be regarded as a series of linkages and relationships, and the company’s operating efficiency can be seen to depend upon how well these connections work. It notes that if the system can be made to flow smoothly, at minimum cost, than the chances are that the overall company performance, measured by any criteria, could be high (complimentarity?). In practice, however, it is very common to find bottlenecks and poor integration between different parts of this system, resulting in unsatisfactory performance (conflict?). In order to identify the effects of the Internet on the physical logistic system, the WWW sites of 500 commercial companies were randomly selected, accessed and studied during November 1999.