Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

www.elsevier.com/locate/im

Evolution of e-commerce Web sites: A conceptual

framework and a longitudinal study
Sung-Chi Chu a,*, Lawrence C. Leung a, Yer Van Hui b, Waiman Cheung a
a

Department of Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, China
b
Department of Management Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Received 29 September 2004; received in revised form 4 October 2006; accepted 9 November 2006
Available online 27 December 2006

Abstract
Before the 1990s, the digital exchange of information between companies was achieved using electronic data interchange (EDI)
and needed agreement between the organizations. The early 1990s saw the commercialization of the Internet and the advent of open
computer technology and connectivity became affordable for individuals as well as businesses. The consequence was the World
Wide Web. As e-commerce activities extended across businesses, enterprises, and industries, a genre of Web sites emerged allowing
the integrative management of business operations. Here, we provide an evolutionary perspective of e-commerce Web sites. We
posited that there have been four eras. To chart the evolution of e-commerce Web sites, a conceptual framework was developed to
characterize such sites. Based on the framework, we conducted a longitudinal study between 1993 and 2001. The result showed that
the proposed four eras were clearly discernible.
# 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: e-Commerce; e-Business; Evolution; Web technology; Longitudinal study; Web era

1. Introduction
During the 1980s, an effort was made to standardize
the digital exchange of information was by using EDI.
However, it required pre-arranged agreements and were
often implemented on an expensive value-added network. This therefore had limited commercial viability.
In the early 1990s, by using the Internet and open
computer technology, connectivity became affordable.
The interconnections between businesses and individuals helped in creating the World Wide Web (WWW)
and the advent of powerful search engines and Web sites
turned the Web into a rich information resource.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 3163 4081;

fax: +852 2603 5104.
E-mail address: sungchi@cuhk.edu.hk (S.-C. Chu).
0378-7206/$ see front matter # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.im.2006.11.003

Businesses started to reach potential customers by

providing marketing information and product catalogs
online.
During the mid-1990s, the WWW evolved from an
information resource to location for e-commerce sites,
which required a secure and interactive environment,
and transformed e-commerce activities from single
buyerseller connections to multiple exchanges. It also
became possible to customize or personalize Web sites.
Businesses began to adapt wireless technology to the
Internet [12,21].
There has been a considerable amount of work
performed on the design, use, and user-friendliness of
Web sites and their business models. However, most of
these efforts were targeted at current trading processes
and do not give a holistic view of the incremental
development of Web sites, especially from a technological viewpoint.

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

2. Overview of research on e-commerce Web

sites
As the information Web was leveraged for online
commerce, many views on the way that business should
be conducted were suggested [8,20]. The Web was
found to be an effective channel for commerce [4]. A
classification of the e-commerce research literature
between 1993 and 1999 can be found in Ngai and Wat
[18].
Structures for e-commerce Web sites were proposed
and defined [29,30] to provide an initial analysis of the
online trading domain. Different referential e-commerce frameworks have been proposed [11,22] and
different approaches to the conceptual modeling of
electronic markets offered [28]. The success factors of
Web sites have been investigated [13], and instruments
have been developed to measure factors that influence
success [26].
The trend of devising the most appropriate business
model for the provision of services to online customers
was investigated [14].
EDI technology was successful in bringing business
partners together and leveraged the Internet. As ecommerce began to attract more online customers, new
technologies such as XML were utilized for agentbased e-commerce [6] and Web service security [16].
The need for e-business technologies that allowed
applications between collaborative partners was also
proposed [23].
Studies that focused on new niches in the virtual
environment of the Web, such as building trust
[5,7,9,25], managing reputation [15], and sharing
secrets [24] have been undertaken. Empirical studies
of the factors that influence the use of Web sites [27]
have been conducted. These have considered trust,
pricing strategies, and shopping patterns and highlighted how customer decision support systems are
necessary for online decision making [17,19].
However, the current literature lacks discussion of
the evolutionary development of Web sites. We
therefore tried to develop a framework to analyze
and chart the evolution of Web sites. The work was, in
part, based on that of Chu et al. [2].
3. Elements of an e-commerce Web site
The literature is replete with references to visitors to
a Web site (e.g., [3]). The Web site management body
can be viewed as a host who provides services directly
or facilitates engagement between participants. A
separation of participants and the host is inherent in

155

the architecture of the Web. In Fig. 1, we propose that

both participants and the host have elements that are
universal.
3.1. Participants
Participants can be buyers or sellers that utilize a
Web site to engage in commercial activities. Two
attributes identity and qualification (status or conditions, such as registered or licensed) describe the
participants. Of course, participants can have several
identities or qualifications.
3.2. Host
The Web site management body co-ordinates the
activities on the Web site and is assumed to take on two
attributes: environment and scope-structure. Environment defines the boundary of the e-commerce Web site
and its general business nature, such as merchant,
broker, mall, and portal. Within this, commercial
activities may be structured according to certain
relationships (such as cooperative, collaborative, or
neutral, etc.) between the participants and the host. The
scope-structure attribute describes the relationships or
properties. Thus, a host can be characterized as a neutral
portal (e.g., Yahoo), third-party exchange (e.g., Oracle
Exchange), first-party distributor (e.g., Lifung), vertical
exchange (e.g., Covisint), or collaborative horizontal
exchange (e.g., E 2 Open). A host may have multiple
scope-structure attributes or environmental attributes.
3.3. The Web site core
At the core of the host is the management system,
which consists of
 Core functions (e.g., registering, browsing, and
matching) are those that essentially define the
capabilities and intelligence of the Web site.
Depending on its business model, the functions
define how participants are admitted, how negotiations are performed, and how transactions are
established and fulfilled.
 The core technology organized here into four areas:
information presentation and representation, communication, business logic programming language,
and information storage and retrieval.
 The information base contains the sites information
content, which includes persistent and transitional
data and information for all the e-commerce
activities.

156

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

Fig. 1. Elements of an e-commerce Web site.

4. Analysis of Web site elements: a conceptual

framework
4.1. Analysis of the host objects
Environment objects can be organized into information-based entities, such as Web pages, portals,
classifieds, advertisers, and platforms; market-based
entities, such as marketplaces, distributors, brokers,
and exchanges; organization-based entities, such as
companies, enterprises, stores, malls, industries, and
hubs.
The scope-structure objects define the hosts role in
the commercial relationship and characterize the host
participant relationship (e.g., neutral, generalized,
specialized, or personalized). Community-like objects
may be vertical, horizontal, and will be in some state
from cooperative to collaborative.
4.2. Core functions of a Web site: a transactionbased hierarchy
The e-commerce activities of a Web site have many
core functions that carry out the manipulation and
transformation of information without reference to a
particular object; i.e., these functions are not object
specific. It is important to distinguish a core function
from an e-commerce activity.
The core functions of a Web site are essential for
conducting e-commerce activities. We organized these
functions into transaction hierarchies involving: incubation, negotiation, formation, and management.
Transaction incubation. These functions furnish
participants and the host with basic information
processing capabilities. They can be used to set up
and validate the qualification of the participants, to

respond to their requests, and to guide or organize the

retrieval and storage of information.
Transaction negotiation. These functions facilitate
the negotiation of a commercial transaction (e.g., a
sale). After the initial information search, participants
negotiate, exchanging information, before deciding
whether a transaction should or should not be made.
Transaction formation. The participants next enter
into a phase in which transactions are finalized,
participants are authenticated for payment, and digital
products are sent to the purchaser.
Transaction management. These functions enable the
online coordination of multiple interrelated activities.
They can be used to assist in the management of online
business processes, enabling the integration, consolidation, optimization, and control of e-business processes.
These core functions provide the Web site with
online integrative capability. Platforming sets up the
structural framework for communication between
multiple sources. Data interfacing allows sharing of
information between participants, and process-editing
provides the mechanism for the design and editing of
multiple processes. Consolidation allows online merging of component tasks resulting in the sharing of
resources, and integration achieves the linking of
component tasks across processes to realize operational
or economic efficiency. Optimization ensures the
attainment of the best process design among alternatives. These management functions are not yet
common among Web sites. A brief description of each
core function can be found in Appendix I.
4.3. Core technology
Core technology is necessary to provide the core
functions that enable e-commerce activities. We

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

157

Fig. 2. The core technology areas.

breakdown this into four major areas: communication,

information presentation and representation, language,
and storage and retrieval. These are essential elements
of the Web sites. Fig. 2 depicts the four areas with
representative examples.
Communication. For any two parties to take part in ecommerce activities, a virtual communication channel
must be established.
Information presentation and representation. This
specifies the presentation of the information (its format)
and how it should be organized for exchange (as simple
text, graphical images, sound and video, or a combination).
Language. The precise logical steps for the
manipulation of data and computing resources is the
critical component that forms the building blocks of a
Web sites intelligence capability.
Storage and retrieval. This is the data structure for
recording and retrieval of data and information via local
and remote control.
5. Evolution of e-commerce Web sites
Here, we refer to the period before 1990 as the preWeb era, the early 1990s as the reactive Web era, the
mid-1990s as the interactive Web era, and the period
around the start of the 21st century as the integrative
Web era (Fig. 3).
5.1. Pre-Web era
Before the advent of the World Wide Web,
commercial activities were closed: the mechanisms
were rigid. To engage in business activities digitally, the
channel of communication had to be negotiated.

Although the Internet provided connections between

any two parties, open communication could not be
established until a common message format for
encoding business activities had been developed.
Designed for a network environment, EDI was a
standard that provided a syntax for interchange.
However, it was rigid. The core technology was also
essentially stand alone with no built-in interface
features. The technology was developed too soon to
take advantage of the Internet and was a time of closed,
pre-arranged, one-to-one, business-to-business commerce.
5.2. Reactive Web era
At the start of the 1990s, commercial activities on the
Internet evolved to operating in an environment that was
open and easily accessible. The Internet allowed
information to be shared. The WWW was formed,
marking the beginning of e-commerce. Open access
was achieved. The sharing and viewing of information
became much easier with the advent of the unified URL
identifier and freely available browsers, and communication no longer had to be pre-arranged.
The proliferation of Web sites followed. Primitive
Web sites begin to populate the Web. Together with the
development of powerful Web-based search engines,
the WWW became an effective channel for businesses
to reach potential customers. In this era, Web sites were
typically information resources. Generalized portals
with core functions such as listing, cataloging, posting,
and grouping became common.
Although communication had opened, a request for
information was still one-way. Businesses could only
react to requests. Further, the information could not be

158

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

Fig. 3. Evolution of e-commerce Web sites.

extracted, preventing communication between Web site

users. Moreover, e-commerce activities were impeded
by a lack of secure transmission of confidential
information.
5.3. Interactive Web era
At this time, e-commerce evolved from providing
one-way browsing to becoming a two-way commercial
process. As e-commerce Web sites developed on the
Web, the need arose for the interactive two-way
negotiation of buysell transactions. Interactivity was
achieved primarily as a result of the emergence of a core
technology: cookies. By tracking the footprint of a
participant, cookies allowed interactivity.
The provision of process continuity meant that many
new e-commerce activities could be conducted. Online
shopping became viable. Personalization and customization were also made available as a result of interactive
processes that used new languages. New online
shopping environments with various scope-structures
emerged. Online brokering was also created, mainly as
a result of interactivity. By developing online links, Web
sites were able to match sellers and buyers.
Both shopping and brokering are steps toward buying
and selling but agreements must also be reached between
the buying and selling parties. However, the WWW is a
public domain, and thus the problem of secured

information exchange has had to be solved before online

activities could flourish. Well-established cryptography
systems were used to develop SSL on the Web to
guaranteed the confidentiality and integrity of the parties.
To support the new e-commerce activities of
shopping, personalizing, brokering, buying, and selling,
a set of new core business functions was developed,
mainly those of transaction negotiation and formation
(e.g., matching, ranking, authenticating, and contracting). This era made personalized buying or selling
possible. Core technology continued to evolve to handle
heavy Web site traffic, to provide sophisticated
interfaces to databases such as ODBC, and to improve
language interfaces with databases.
5.4. Integrative Web era
As new e-commerce activities were created, their
management became imperative. Toward the end of the
century, interoperability began to emerge at some Web
sites. Coupled with this, Web sites sought to integrate
processes online: no longer were Web sites used merely
for online trading activities, they were also used for the
management of e-business processes. This era saw the
emergence of e-business processes, such as e-supply
chain management, e-collaboration, e-reengineering,
and e-procurement. The activities and processes were
intertwined online, creating Web sites that were both

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

marketplaces and management platforms. It became

possible to improve collaboration, strategic alliances,
and one-stop business services.
Interoperability requires data sharing. This requires
first, the identification that is needed for information
extraction. By providing an identification syntax, such
as XML, extraction is possible. With it, the information
that is exchanged can be used immediately by legacy
systems, or by software from different vendor products
at a Web site. Second, standardized identification is
needed to support communication between participants
for the management of business processes across Web
sites, etc. Third, cross-Web site access to databases is
necessary; the management of online business processes requires that knowledge from different information bases on-demand.
An operating environment is also needed for online
integration: an online mechanism termed platforming.

159

The platform can track, link, edit, and display

e-business processes. Another major need satisfied
during this time was the online decision support systems
[1].
Integrative Web sites can handle the vertical
management of e-business processes within companies,
enterprises, and across companies and enterprises. Such
features are particularly useful for cross-company
processes such as e-collaboration, e-supply chain
management, e-customer relationship management,
and e-procurement. Web sites that integrate crosscompany processes are essentially third-party agents.
Fourth-party Web sites, which manage the e-commerce
activities and business processes of third-party service
providers, have also emerged.
It is clear that the motivation to integrate complex
process online has also created the need to integrate the
areas of core technology. Web services have brought

Table 1
Characteristics of four Web eras
Pre-Web

Reactive Web

Interactive Web

Integrative Web

Early 1990s
Open, one-way

Mid 1990s
Secured, two-way

Late 1990s to early 2000

Integrated, any-to-any

E-commerce
activities

Pre-1990
Closed,
pre-arranged
Sending,
receiving

Browsing, informationsearching, broadcasting,

cataloguing, advertising,
publishing, aggregating,
etc.

Shopping, personalizing, brokering,

customizing, bidding, auctioning,
buying, selling, paying, gaming, etc.

e-Collaboration, e-SCM,
e-procurement, e-CRM,
e-reengineering

Elements/dimension
Participants

One-to-one

One-to-one

One-to-many

Many-to-many;
any-to-any

Proprietary,
standalone

First-party, second-party,
neutral, generalized

Third-party, personalized, specialized,

fellowship, horizontal

Dedicated
connection

Web page, portal,

classified, company

Exchange, marketplace, merchant,

distributor, broker, mall

Vertical, cooperative,
collaborative,
fourth-party
Platform, enterprise,
community, industry,
hub

None

Transaction incubation
functions: listing,
posting, browsing,
grouping, etc.

Transaction negotiation and formation

functions: tracking, profiling, matching,
ranking, offering, fulfilling, etc.

Transaction management
functions: data interfacing,
platforming, processediting, consolidating,
integrating, optimizing, etc.

ftp, telnet,
EDI, eft
Ascii

HTTP, CGI

Cookies, SSL

Wap, PKI

Html

SSI, flash (plug-ins), vrml

Xhtml, XML

C, C++, Perl

Java, PHP

DbaseIV, Access,
Oracle, SQL

ODBC

ASP, JSP, JavaBeans,

EJB, ColdFusion
JDBC, SQLJ

Time frame
Characteristics

Hosts
Scope-structure

Environment

Core functions

Core technology
Communication
Presentation and
representation
Language
Storage and retrieval

Fortran, C,
Perl, C++
DbaseIII, SQL

160

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

XML-based service descriptions, business logics

invocations, and communication into one serviceoriented approach to enable online business processes
for the semantic Web [10]. The merging of the four
areas is likely to continue. Table 1 summarizes changes
in the four eras.
6. Empirical support of the eras in the evolution
We conduct a longitudinal study of Web sites
between 1993 and 2001. This aimed at seeking
empirical evidence, based on our framework, to support
the characterization that the evolution of Web sites can
indeed be divided into four eras.
6.1. A longitudinal study based on articles in
Internet World
We first accessed the Web sites in order to analyze
the online functions that each provided. However, there
were thousands of Web sites, and many did not provide
past information, it was impossible to determine how
they had evolved. Also, many past Web sites had been
removed. A plausible alternative was to find a source
that took snapshots of Web sites (such as http://
www.archive.org). For such a site, if an address is given,
it can provide the Web page. However, this would have
required that we would have had to know how to select
each Web site of interest and it would also have been
difficult if not impossible to assess the functionality of a
site based on just the Web page.
We then looked into historical information in the
print media. We had to rule out using information from
academic journal articles as a source due to varying
time-to-publish lags which could not be substantiated.
Trade magazines, on the other hand, did provide
information that was current; articles in them could
provide longitudinal snapshots of current events over
the years. There are three trade magazines to which
many members of the IT industry subscribe: Computerworld, which targets IT managers, Information Weekly,
which targets IS managers, and Internet World (http://
www.internetworld.com) which discusses e-commerce
and targets Internet professionals. The last of these was
selected as the secondary information source because of
its focus on Internet and e-commerce.
We browsed each monthly issue (19932001)1 of the
magazine and recorded the articles that discussed e1

The magazine began monthly publication in May 1994; before

that, issues were bimonthly.

commerce activities. Each article was made an

observation unit and recorded as an entry in a table
(see http://dse.baf.cuhk.edu.hk/eras/appendixII.pdf). In
each issue, we read two specific article types news and
features while excluding both editorials and commentaries. In addition, two kinds of articles were not
considered: (1) articles on telecommunication advances
and (2) articles on browser technology. For each article,
we skimmed through the contents to determine whether
the title/subtitle conveyed the key e-commerce activity
or activities. For example, in the September 1994 issue,
the article on Britannica is taking the encyclopedia to
the net (an observation unit) reported that Britannica
was putting the encyclopedia online and described the
e-commerce activities involved. Additional descriptive
text with the title/subtitle was included with an endnote
as necessary.
For each recorded article, we determined the core
functions required to conduct the e-commerce activities
per the definition given in Appendix I.
6.2. Results of the empirical study
We organized the resulting core functions in a table,
which can be accessed at http://dse.baf.cuhk.edu.hk/
eras/appendixIII.pdf. The functions were tallied
according to the transaction types and grouped with
respect to our view of Web eras. Next, three groupings
of core functions e-commerce activities in the
Internet World were summarized as shown in Table 2.
The numerical values were the count of respective core
functions that had occurred in the surveyed years; the
percentages of the core functions per year are also
shown.
Two plots were made of these results. Fig. 4 used the
frequency counts, while Fig. 5 used the percentages.
The symbols (circle, square, and triangle) represented
core functions of reactive, interactive, and integrative
nature, respectively.
From Fig. 4, we note that the frequency of core
functions dealing with reactive Web sites peaked in
1994. The decline of the reactive core functions
occurred in 1995, the year in which interactive core
functions emerged. The interactive core functions,
responsible for e-commerce activities, quickly took
hold of the Web in 1996 and 1997. The level of
interactive core functions declined in 1998. Around this
time, e-business processes rose and these required
integrative activities and had to be conducted on a
common platform. Technology continued to take note,
improve and innovate. From that point, integrative core
functions constituted the primary interests of the

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

161

Table 2
Number of reactive, interactive and integrative core functions per year

Reactive
Interactive
Integrative

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

35 (100%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)

91 (99%)
1 (1%)
0 (0%)

37 (65%)
20 (35%)
0 (0%)

8 (12%)
55 (86%)
1 (2%)

7 (9%)
70 (89%)
2 (2%)

1 (3%)
10 (24%)
30 (73%)

1 (1%)
20 (27%)
54 (72%)

0 (0%)
16 (28%)
41 (72%)

1 (2%)
2 (4%)
46 (94%)

magazine. Also, we found that the peak in the

interactive era was gradual; the onset of the integrative
era, in 1999 was followed by a small dip in the
anticipated activities of that era the following year.
Fig. 5 is the normalized view of the core functions
across the years. Except for the two end years where the
respective percentages were very high, it confirmed our
observations. The empirical data suggested that the
reactive era ended around 1995, the interactive era was
between 1996 and 1998, and the integrative era began in
1999. The grayscale background shadings show the
three Web eras. The pre-Web era was perhaps more
obvious and occurred before 1993.
6.3. Eras from the perspective of the emergence of
core technology
We next investigated the emergence of core
technology to determine whether it was consistent with

the eras. Here, based on the four areas, we tracked the

announcement dates of key technologies, as cited in
Internet World. We followed the Web sites of influential
technology providers (such as Microsoft, Sun and
Oracle, standards organizations, such as W3C and IETF,
and other software and languages such as Perl, PHP, and
Apache) to provide an approximate timeline of core
technology introduction (Fig. 6).
The HTTP innovation occurred before 1993 and was
the key driving protocol, bringing about the reactive ecommerce activities that became dominant in 1994.
During the reactive era, CGI (1993) and cookies (1994)
were introduced, and fully adapted into the fabric of
Web sites; other key technologies, such as Java and
Javascript, core functions thus enabled brought about
the interactive era that peaked in 1997.
It can be argued that the development of technology
and the evolution of e-commerce activities had a strong
relationship. Our empirical data did show that the

Fig. 4. Frequencies of respective e-commerce core functions from 1993 to 2001.

162

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

Fig. 5. Respective e-commerce core functions (in percentage) from 1993 to 2001.

Fig. 6. Timeline of core technology births and enhancements over the eras.

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

emergence of the core technology was in line with the

evolution of the e-commerce Web sites. This gives
further support to our view that there were indeed four
eras to the evolution of e-commerce Web sites.
Appendix A. Description of core functions
Transaction incubation
Searching: enables the guided retrieval of specific information
Registering: enables the receipt and storage of the requested
information
Browsing: enables unguided information viewing
Listing: provides information in a linear representation
Posting: delivers the selected information
Grouping: enables the guided association of the selected
information
Cataloging: organizes information in a specific structure
Transaction negotiation
Tracking: maintaining records of tracked information
Messaging: sending asynchronized information
Certifying: establishing the existence of specific information
Profiling: creating preference information
Filtering: sieving through information
Matching: searching for and linking related information
Ranking: sorting information in accordance with specific criteria
Transaction formation
Authenticating: verifying by matching certified information
Offering: receiving information within a prescribed range
Contracting: accepting and recording the offered information
Fulfilling: transferring the requested/approved digital information
Transaction management
Platforming: setting up the exchange of dynamically shared
information from multiple sources
Data interfacing: standardizing the representation of shared
information from multiple sources
Multiple tracking: linking multiple tracked information
Process-editing: searching and grouping multiple tracked
information
Consolidating: combining matched tracked information of
multiple sources
Integrating: combining consecutively ordered information
Optimizing: selecting best process-edited information

References
[1] C. Carlsson, E. Turban, Introduction DSS: directions for the next
decade, Decision Support Systems 33 (2), 2002, pp. 105110.
[2] S. Chu, L.C. Leung, Y.V. Hui, W. Cheung, 4th party cyber
logistics for air cargo, International Series in Operations
Research and Management Science, (vol. 73), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, USA, 2004.
[3] K. De Wulf, N. Schillewaert, S. Muylle, D. Rangarajan, The role
of pleasure in Web site success, Information & Management 43
(4), 2006, pp. 434446.
[4] G. Elofson, W.N. Robinson, Creating a custom mass-production
channel on the Internet, Communication of the ACM 41 (3),
1998, pp. 5662.

163

[5] D. Gefen, E. Karahanna, D.W. Straub, Trust and TAM in online

shopping: an integrated model, MIS Quarterly 27 (1), 2003, pp.
5190.
[6] R.J. Glushko, J.M. Tenenbaum, B. Meltzer, An XML framework
for agent-based e-commerce, Communication of the ACM 42
(3), 1999, pp. 106114.
[7] D. Hoffman, T.P. Novak, M. Peralta, Building consumer trust
online, Communication of the ACM 42 (4), 1999, pp. 8085.
[8] D. Jutla, P. Bodorik, C. Hajnal, C. Davis, Making business sense
of electronic commerce, IEEE Computer 32 (3), 1999, pp. 67
75.
[9] M. Koufaris, W. Hampton-Sosa, The development of initial trust
in an online company by new customers, Information & Management 41 (3), 2004, pp. 377397.
[10] H. Kreger, Fulfilling the Web services promise, Communication
of the ACM 46 (6), 2003, pp. 2934.
[11] L.C. Leung, W. Cheung, Y.V. Hui, A framework for a logistics ecommerce community network: the Hong Kong air cargo industry, IEEE Transactions on System, Man, and Cybernetics 30 (4),
2000, pp. 446455.
[12] T. Liang, C. Wei, Introduction to the special issue: mobile
commerce applications, International Journal of Electronic
Commerce 8 (3), 2004, pp. 717.
[13] C. Liu, K.P. Arnett, Exploring the factors associated with Web
site success in the context of electronic commerce, Information
& Management 38 (1), 2000, pp. 2333.
[14] G.L. Lohse, P. Spiller, Electronic shopping, Communication of
the ACM 41 (7), 1998, pp. 8188.
[15] R.A. Malaga, Web-based reputation management systems: problems and suggested solutions, Electronic Commerce Research 1
(4), 2001, pp. 403417.
[16] M. Naedele, Standards for XML and Web services security,
IEEE Computer 36 (4), 2003, pp. 9698.
[17] S. Negash, T. Ryan, M. Igbaria, Quality and effectiveness in
Web-based customer support systems, Information & Management 40 (8), 2003, pp. 757768.
[18] E.W.T. Ngai, F.K.T. Wat, A literature review and classification of
electronic commerce research, Information & Management 39
(5), 2002, pp. 415429.
[19] R.M. OKeefe, T. McEachern, Web-based customer decision
support systems, Communication of the ACM 41 (3), 1998, pp.
7178.
[20] F.J. Riggins, H. Rhee, Toward a unified view of electronic
commerce, Communication of the ACM 41 (10), 1998, pp.
8895.
[21] J.A. Senn, The emergence of m-commerce, IEEE Computer 33
(12), 2000, pp. 148150.
[22] S.S.Y. Shim, V.S. Pendyala, M. Sundaram, J.Z. Gao, Businessto-business e-commerce frameworks, IEEE Computer 33 (10),
2000, pp. 4047.
[23] R.A. Smith, Trends in e-business technologies, IBM Systems
Journal 40 (1), 2001, pp. 47.
[24] E.C. Tan, P.C. Leong, L.T. Sio, Group access control of confidential files in e-commerce management using shared-secret
scheme, Electronic Commerce Research 2 (12), 2002, pp. 151
158.
[25] Y.-H. Tan, W. Thoen, Toward a generic model of trust for
electronic commerce, International Journal of Electronic Commerce 5 (2), 2000, pp. 6174.
[26] G. Torkzadeh, G. Dhillon, Measuring factors that influence the
success of Internet commerce, Information Systems Research 13
(2), 2002, pp. 187204.

164

S.-C. Chu et al. / Information & Management 44 (2007) 154164

[27] H. Van der Heijden, Factors influencing the using of Web sites:
the case of a generic portal in The Netherlands, Information &
Management 40 (6), 2003, pp. 541549.
[28] H. Wang, A conceptual model for virtual markets, Information &
Management 32 (3), 1997, pp. 147161.
[29] R.T. Wigand, Electronic commerce: definition, theory, and
context, The Information Society 13 (1), 1997, pp. 116.
[30] V. Zwass, Electronic commerce: structures and issues,
International Journal of Electronic Commerce 1 (1), 1996, pp.
323.
Sung-Chi Chu is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Decision
Sciences and Managerial Economics at
the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
His current research interests are RFIDaware e-services and e-platform. He
received his PhD and MSc from Virginia
Tech, and BS from Utah State University.

Lawrence C. Leung is a professor in the

department of Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received a PhD and a
MSIE from Virginia Tech and a BSIE from
Northeastern University.

Yer Van Hui is a professor in the Department of Management Sciences at the City
University of Hong Kong. His research
interests include decision sciences and
applied statistics. He has published articles
in academic journals such as Management
Science, IEEE Transactions, International
Journal of Production Research, Journal of
the Operational Research Society, Journal
of the American Statistical Association,
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, etc.
Waiman Cheung, director of Li & Fung
Institute of Supply Chain Management &
Logistics and director of Center of Cyber
Logistics, holds an MBA and a PhD in
decision sciences and engineering systems
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He
is currently a professor in the Faculty of
Business Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he teaches
both graduate and undergraduate MIS
courses. Prior to that, he had worked as a technical staff for Oracle
Systems in the US. Dr. Cheung has done studies and consulting works
for DHL, Airport Authority Hong Kong, Dragonair, Sun Hung Kai
Properties Ltd., SML Group Ltd. and the Innovation and Technology
Commission. Dr. Cheung has contributed articles to ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Decision Sciences, IEEE Transactions
on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, etc.