Key learning week 1 session 1 & 2

·         Discussion on the segments to which e-business was relevant, mostly the B2C segment when E-business was an emerging in the end of 20^th century. During 1996-2000, the focus was on innovation and in the B2C segment, after which in 2001 till 2008, the focus shifted to saving costs (due to lack of money in the market after the 9/11 attacks) which could best happen in an online business in which there are minimal operational costs if inventories are not considered or the supplier supplies directly to customer. But after the dot-com bubble burst, it was like a downfall before rising again, with websites shutting down. When the market revived, VCs appeared again.

 

·         Transition from Intermediation to Disintermediation to Reintermediation. From B2I2C to B2C to B2E2C. B2C also co-existed with B2E2C but the scale of e-market is much larger. We also learnt that there are 4 major aspects of doing business – Value Creation, Value Capturing, Value Delivery, and Value Sustaining.­

 

·         We see that unlike the earlier model of a customer contacting a dealer for goods who would in turn procure from the supplier and then supply to the customer/consumer, the online model has reduced this time consuming gap between the supplier and the consumer while maintaining the profitability of the dealer. In fact, it has become better by shortening the process cycle time of order to pay.

 

·         Porter's five forces model is more applicable to mature markets. In case of E-business Bargaining power of the "Channel" is particularly important. There is less focus on threat of new entrants because for competing in this sector one has to either be deep pocketed like Amazon or getting adequate funds and have a fantastic business model to get good returns.

Regards,

Sonam Gupta

12IT-026