Rlchard Pettlnger

E-MARKETS

Stress on the commercial and operational front has been generated for the following reasons.

» Fashionable and faddish drives to create Websites, interactive, and virtual facilities on which there are envisaged standard commercial returns.

» High levels of investment either placed with dot.com entrepreneurs or by traditional companies in Website ventures on which standard commercial returns are also envisaged and required.

» Drives to produce Websites in spite of a lack of full understanding of the relationship between Website production and enhanced performance; and compounded by a lack of clarity surrounding the contribution made to strategy, marketing, products and service delivery, and financial performance.

» Lack of results on e-ventures (see Summary box 4.4). Part of this is due to a lack of understanding of the results that such ventures can be expected to produce. This has been compounded by the fashion/faddish drive indicated above. Part is attributable to wider losses of confidence on the NASDAQ, the hi-tech stock market.

Part is also attributable to a collective and individual unwillingness to try to establish what is possible and what is not. While levels and rates of return on investments in cars, carpets, bricks, and airlines are well known, those on e-ventures are not. Neither have organizations, or their managers, been willing to admit that they do not know this, and consequently little has been done about it.

THE E-DIMENSION 35
business products and services. There is also plenty of evidence that Web-based activities make a valuable and effective contribu- tion provided that they are fully integrated with the physical and traditional elements. The following is an example.