The Future of B2C E-Commerce SIEGFRIED NUMBERGER AND CARSTEN RENNHAK SYSTEM VARIABLES FOR DESCRIBING THE LONG-TERM DEVELOPMENT OF B2C E-COMMERCE

Condensing the understanding of Businessto-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce and its causal relations with the environment in a set of future meaningful, specific and exhaustive variables is a prerequisite for long-term forecasting. There is no consensus regarding even present quantitative estimates of e-commerce, nor does current research pinpoint immediate cause or effect. In around 50 semi-structured interviews with cross-functional e-commerce practitioners, academics, users and non-users, 14 variables describing the future structure of e-commerce and 35 environment variables have been identified. The understanding of e-commerce is focusing on the terms ‘automation’ and ‘spatial separated delivery’, leading to a differentiation between distance selling e-commerce and automated transactions at retail outlets. The environments investigated include Society, Distribution, Technology, Retail Outlets, Socio-Politics and Market environments, providing a holistic view on the long-term outlook of e-commerce.