E-Commerce

Lecturers: Dr R.J. Anderson, Mr J.A. Lang, Mr N. Bohm and Mr G. Simister (rja14@cl.cam.ac.uk)

No. of lectures: 6

Prerequisite courses: Business Studies (given concurrently), Security

Aims

This course aims to give students an outline of the issues involved in setting up an e-commerce site.

Lectures

• The history of electronic commerce. The growth of the telegraph; mail order; call centres; EDI; web-based businesses. Network economics: real and virtual networks, supply-side versus demand-side scale economies, Metcalfe's law, the dominant firm model, the differentiated pricing model.

• Web site and database design. Stock and price control; credit cards and other payment mechanisms. Security - SSL; Microsoft Passport; fulfilment; audit. Help desk and conflict resolution.

• The law and electronic commerce. Contract and tort; copyright; binding actions; liabilities and remedies. Legislation: RIP; Data Protection; EU Directives on Distance Selling and Electronic Signatures.

• Putting it into practice. Driving and analysing traffic; site design and UI factors; search engines; dynamic pricing models. Integration with traditional media. The network marketing problem. Overseas sales. E-mail and SPAM.

• Extracting value. Personalisation; localisation; stock and price control; collaborative filtering. Advertising models. Data mining: modelling the user. Brand value.

• Finance. How business plans are put together. Venture capital; equity markets; the recent hysteria; maximising shareholder value. Future trends.

Objectives

At the end of the course students should know how to apply their computer science skills to the conduct of e-commerce with some understanding of the legal, security, commercial, economic, marketing and infrastructure issues involved.

Recommended books

Shapiro, C. & Varian, H. (1998). Information Rules. Harvard Business School Press.

Additional reading:

Standage, T. (1999). The Victorian Internet. Phoenix Press.