Course pages 2018–19
E-Commerce
Principal lecturers: Jack Lang, Stewart McTavish
Taken by: Part II CST 50%, Part II CST 75%
Past exam questions
No. of lectures: 8
Suggested hours of supervision: 2 (example classes if requested)
Prerequisite courses: Business Studies, Security, Economics, Law & Ethics
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. Mail order; EDI;
web-based businesses, credit card processing, PKI, identity and
other hot topics.
- Network economics. Real and virtual networks, supply-side
versus demand-side scale economies, Metcalfe’s law, the dominant
firm model, the differentiated pricing model Data Protection Act,
Distance Selling regulations, business models.
- Web site design. Stock and price control; domain names,
common mistakes, dynamic pages, transition diagrams, content
management systems, multiple targets.
- Web site implementation. Merchant systems, system design
and sizing, enterprise integration, payment mechanisms, CRM and help
desks. Personalisation and internationalisation.
- 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. Search engine interaction,
driving and analysing traffic; dynamic pricing models. Integration
with traditional media. Logs and audit, data mining modelling the
user. collaborative filtering and affinity marketing brand value,
building communities, typical behaviour.
- Finance. How business plans are put together. Funding
Internet ventures; the recent hysteria; maximising shareholder
value. Future trends.
- UK and International Internet Regulation. Data Protection
Act and US Privacy laws; HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, Security Breach
Disclosure, RIP Act 2000, Electronic Communications Act 2000,
Patriot Act, Privacy Directives, data retention; specific issues:
deep linking, Inlining, brand misuse, phishing.
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 reading
Shapiro, C. & Varian, H. (1998). Information rules. Harvard Business School Press.
Additional reading:
Standage, T. (1999). The Victorian Internet. Phoenix Press. Klemperer, P. (2004). Auctions: theory and practice. Princeton Paperback ISBN 0-691-11925-2.