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Chapter 15Economics and Justification of Electronic Commerce
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Learning Objectives
1. Describe the need for justifying EC investments, how it is done, and how metrics are used to determine justification.
2. Understand the difficulties in measuring and justifying EC investments.
3. Recognize the difficulties in establishing intangible metrics and describe how to overcome them.
4. List and briefly describe traditional and advanced methods of justifying IT investments.
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Learning Objectives
5. Understand how e-CRM, e-learning, and other EC projects are justified.
6. Describe some economic principles of EC.
7. Understand how product, industry, seller, and buyer characteristics impact the economics of EC.
8. Recognize key factors to the success of EC projects and the major reasons for failures.
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• Increased Demand for Financial Justification– Addressing accountability is difficult:
• 65% of company executives lack the knowledge or tools to do ROI calculations
• 75% of company executives have no formal processes or budgets in place for measuring ROI
• 68% of company executives do not measure how projects coincide with promised benefits 6 months after completion
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• Other Reasons Why EC Justification Is Needed– Companies now realize that EC is not necessarily
the solution to all problems. Therefore, EC projects compete for funding and resources with other internal and external projects. Analysis is needed to determine when funding of an EC project is appropriate
– In some large companies, and in many public organizations, a formal evaluation of requests for funding is mandated
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• Other Reasons Why EC Justification Is Needed– Companies need to assess the success of EC
projects after they have been completed and then on a periodic basis (see Chapter 14)
– The success of EC projects may be assessed in order to pay bonuses to those involved with the project
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• EC Investment Categories and Benefits– The IT infrastructure provides the foundation for EC
applications in the enterprise– EC applications are specific systems and programs
for achieving certain objectives
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• Specific Benefits– cost reduction (85%)– productivity improvement (7%)– improved customer satisfaction (6%)– improved staffing levels (5%)– higher revenues (4%)– higher earnings (4%)– better customer retention (4%)– more return of equity (3%)– faster time-to-market (3%)
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• How Is an EC Investment Justified?
cost-benefit analysis
A comparison of the costs of a project against the benefits
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• Justification may not be necessary when:– The value of the investment is relatively small for the
organization– The relevant data are not available, inaccurate, or too
volatile– The EC project is mandated—it must be done
regardless of the costs and benefits involved
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Why Justify EC Investments? How Can They Be Justified?
• Using Metrics in EC Justificationmetric
A specific, measurable standard against which actual performance is compared
key performance indicators (KPI)
The quantitative expression of critically important metrics
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Difficulties in Measuring and Justifying EC Investments
• The EC Justification Process– The EC justification process varies depending on the
situation and the methods used– In its extreme, it can be very complex
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Exhibit 15.1 A Model for EC Project Justification
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Difficulties in Measuring and Justifying EC Investments
• Difficulties in Measuring Productivity and Performance Gains
– Data and Analysis Issues– EC Productivity Gains May Be Offset By Losses in
Other Areas– Incorrectly Defining What Is Measured– Other Difficulties
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Difficulties in Measuring and Justifying EC Investments
• Relating IT Expenditures to Organizational Performance
• The relationship between investment and performance is indirect
• Factors such as shared IT assets and how they are used can impact organizational performance and make it difficult to assess the value of an IT (or EC) investment
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Difficulties in Measuring and Justifying EC Investments
• Difficulties in Measuring Costs and Benefits– Tangible Costs and Benefits—are those that are easy
to measure and quantify and that relate directly to a specific investment
– Intangible Costs and Benefits• Costs may involve having to change or adapt other
business processes or information systems
• Intangible benefits include faster time-to-market, increased employee and customer satisfaction, easier distribution, greater organizational agility, and improved control
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Difficulties in Measuring and Justifying EC Investments
– Handling Intangible Benefits• The most straightforward solution to the problem of
evaluating intangible benefits in cost-benefit analysis is to make rough estimates of the monetary values of all of the intangible benefits and then conduct a ROI or similar financial analysis
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Exhibit 15.2 Process Approach to IT Organizational Investment and Impact
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Methods and Tools for Evaluating and Justifying EC Investments
• Methodological Aspects of Justifying EC Investments
– Types of Costs• Distinguish between initial (up-front) costs and
operating costs• Direct and indirect costs• In-kind costs
– Break-Even Analyses
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Methods and Tools for Evaluating and Justifying EC Investments
• Methodological Aspects of Justifying EC Investments
total cost of ownership (TCO)
A formula for calculating the cost of owning, operating, and controlling an IT system
total benefits of ownership (TBO)
Benefits of ownership that include both tangible and the intangible benefits
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Methods and Tools for Evaluating and Justifying EC Investments
• Methodological Aspects of Justifying EC Investments
– Business ROI– Technology ROI
ROI calculator
Calculator that uses metrics and formulas to compute ROI
– Economic Value Added
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Methods and Tools for Evaluating and Justifying EC Investments
• Traditional (Generic) Methods for Evaluating IT Investments
– Rate of ROI Method– Payback Period– Net Present Value
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Methods and Tools for Evaluating and Justifying EC Investments
• Advanced Methods for Evaluating IT and EC Investments
value analysis
Method where a company evaluates intangible benefits using a low-cost, trial EC system before deciding whether to commit a larger investment to a complete system
dashboard
A single view that provides the status of multiple metrics
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Examples of EC Project Justification
• E-Procurement– E-procurement is not limited to just buying and selling– It also encompasses the various processes involved in buying
and selling:• Selecting suppliers• Submitting formal requests for goods and services to suppliers• Getting approval from buyers• Processing purchase orders• Fulfilling orders• Delivering and receiving items• Processing payments
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Examples of EC Project Justification
• Justifying a Portal– Internal payoff must result in productivity
improvements– External value is determined by revenue generation
• Justifying E-Training Projects– When comparing e-training and traditional training
methods, several factors, most of which are intangible, must be evaluated
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Examples of EC Project Justification
• Justifying and Investment in RFIDAlthough such systems offer many tangible benefits that can be defined, many measures cannot be developed due to the fact that the technology is new and that legal requirements (for privacy protection) are still evolving
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Examples of EC Project Justification
• Justifying Security Projects– More than 85% of viruses enter business networks via
e-mail. Cleaning up infections is labor intensive, but anti-virus scanning is not
– Employee security training is usually poorly done. Employees told what to do, with little or no time devoted to why specific security rules are in place
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The Economics of EC
• Production Costs– Increasing Returns to Scale
network effects
Effects created when leading products in an industry attract a base of users, which leads to the development of complementary products, further strengthening the position of the dominant product
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The Economics of EC
• Production Costs– Increasing Returns to Scale
lock-in effect
Effect created when users do not switch to another site because of barriers posed by having to learn new site navigation systems and transaction processes
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Exhibit 15.8 Increasing Versus Decreasing Returns
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The Economics of EC
• Production Costs– Product Cost Curves
average-cost curve (AVC)
Behavior of average costs as quantity changes; generally, as quantity increases, average costs decline
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Exhibit 15.9 Cost Curve of (a) Regular and (b) Digital Products
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The Economics of EC
• Production Functionproduction function
An equation indicating that for the same quantity of production, Q, companies either can use a certain amount of labor or invest in more automation
agency costs
Costs incurred in ensuring that the agent performs tasks as expected (also called administrative costs)
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Exhibit 15.10 The Economic Effects of EC
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The Economics of EC
• Production Costs
transaction costs
Costs that are associated with the distribution (sale) and/or exchange of products and services including the cost of searching for buyers and sellers, gathering information, negotiating, decision-making, monitoring the exchange of goods, and legal fees
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Exhibit 15.11 The Economic Effects of EC: Transaction Costs
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Exhibit 15.12 Reach Versus Richness
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The Economics of EC
• Reducing Transaction Friction or Risk
product differentiation
Exploiting EC to provide products with special features to add greater value to customers
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The Economics of EC
agility
An EC firm’s ability to capture, report and quickly respond to changes happening in the marketplace
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The Economics of EC
valuationThe fair market value of a business or the price at which a property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller who are both informed and under no compulsion to act. For a publicly traded company, the value can be readily obtained by the price the stock is selling over the exchange
• Valuation Methods– The comparable method– The financial performance method– The venture capital method
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Factors That Determine EC Success
• Product Characteristics
• Industry Characteristics
• Seller Characteristics
• Consumer Characteristics
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Factors That Determine EC Success
• The Levels of EC ManagementUltimately, the level of measurement relates to what is of value to the various constituents at each level
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Opportunities for Success in EC and Avoiding Failure
• E-Commerce Failures– At a macroeconomic level, technological revolutions
have had a boom–bust–consolidation cycle– At a mid-economic level, the bursting of the dot-com
bubble in 2000–2003 is consistent with periodic economic downturns
– At a microeconomic level, the “Web rush” reflected an over allocation of scarce resources—venture capital and technical personnel—and too many advertising-driven business models
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Opportunities for Success in EC and Avoiding Failure
• Top three factors for EC success– B2C EC
• effective marketing management• an attractive Web site• building strong connections with the customers
– B2B EC• readiness of trading partners• information integration inside the company and in the supply chain• completeness of the EC system
– Overall success • proper business model• readiness of the firm to become an e-business• internal enterprise integration
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Opportunities for Success in EC and Avoiding Failure
digital options
A set of IT-enabled capabilities in the form of digitized enterprise work processes and knowledge systems
complementary investments
Additional investments, such as training, made to maximize the returns from EC investments
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Opportunities for Success in EC and Avoiding Failure
• Cultural DifferencesCritical elements that can affect the value of EC across cultures are perceived trust, consumer loyalty, regulation, political influences
• EC in Developing EconomiesDeveloping economies often face power blackouts, unreliable telecommunications infrastructure, undependable delivery mechanisms, and the fact that only a few customers own credit cards
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Managerial Issues
1. How do we measure the value of EC investment?
2. What complementary investments will be needed?
3. How do we shift from tangible to intangible benefits?
4. Who should conduct a justification?
5. Should we use the ROI calculator provided by a vendor who wants to sell us an EC system?
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Summary
1. The need for EC justification.
2. The difficulties in justifying EC investment.
3. Difficulties in established intangible metrics.
4. Traditional methods for evaluating EC investments.
5. Understand how specific EC projects are justified.
6. EC investment evaluation.
7. E-marketplace economics.
8. Reasons for EC success and failure.