It Management Practices and Theretail E-commerce Site

Managers and researchers would benefit from both an understanding of the organizational practices that result in more featured e-commerce sites and an understanding of the particular features that contribute to firm performance. A Web-based survey of 458 managers of business-to-consumer e-commerce revealed that two organizational practices CEO commitment and planning generally resulted in more robust sites whereas business process redesign, did not. It also showed that more features contributed to firm performance. Four site features, namely publishing applications, catalog applications, interactivity, and interfaces, predicted firm performance at a statistically significant level, while surprisingly, two others, transaction applications and server performance, did not. In effect, this research contributes by demonstrating the general importance of the organizational practices and site features, while raising questions about business process redesign and the two particular site features.