This text fills a key gap in our understanding of electronic commerce. Many books on the subject are simply opportunistic - authors promising to deliver knowledge (for example, becoming rich through e-commerce or advice on building a state-of-the-art website) they don't actually seem to possess, and most of these are badly written. Other books are essentially war stories - although often useful for understanding the past, they don't cast much light on the future. A few authors, with a gift for synthesis, offer strategic prescriptions that seem to make sense, and are eminently readable. Very few of this group of authors actually conduct the research they write about, even fewer take a behavioural perspective.
If we think about understanding e-commerce, we soon realise that we have to examine the intersections among technology, economics, and behaviour. While there is no shortage of texts on the enabling technology, it changes so rapidly that any available textbook is likely to be obsolete. Several texts have recently been published that focus on the economics of networks, so that gap seems to be filled. That leaves us with online behaviour, an important niche that this book explores in an interesting way.
Strengths? After a mercifully brief introduction to technology, the text alternates between a demand and supply perspective - Chapter 3 (Web strategy: attracting and retaining visitors) leads us to an examination of the use of web technology to support marketing (Chapter 4), promotion and purchasing (5), and distribution (6). Service quality and pricing are briefly addressed (Chapters 7 and 8), and the book ends with a snappy little review of postmodernism in the context of e-commerce.
Weaknesses? The text is not likely to interest the wirehead audience, even though they really would benefit the most from a change in perspective. The legal issues are left to others, an unfortunate omission from both the business and social science perspective. It is very suitable as the main text for an undergraduate e-commerce survey course, and as a supplementary text for courses in social science, business, Communications, and Law.
