Relationship marketing in electronic commerce environments

The use of electronic commerce environments (ECEs) as a means of enacting transactions and relationships with customers is increasing exponentially. Recent statistical data supports this claim and it is predicted that, by the turn of the century, total revenue streams through ECEs, such as the Internet, will exceed $US200 billion. To date, most forecasts of market potential have attributed this growth to developing ITs which have enabled more businesses to adopt electronic commerce as a new channel for transactions as well as a dramatic growth in the number of customers enlisted in on-line commerce services (Crede, 1995; Hoffman and Novak; 1996). However, as marketers attempt to capture the projected market growth, their focus has shifted to understanding how such IT-enabled relationships are changing the organization and its external interactions (Cash and Konsynski, 1985; Malone et al., 1987; Markus and Robey, 1988; Konsynski and McFarlan, 1991; Scott-Morton, 1991). Part of this enquiry focuses on the implications of this change on the selection of appropriate strategies for electronic commerce relationships (Thirkell, 1997; Davis et al., 1999) and on the emerging role of digital intermediaries in the consumer transaction process (Fox, 1996; Hoffman and Novak, 1996; Sarkar et al., 1996; Alba et al., 1997; Burke, 1997). Investigation into the changing nature of channels in ECEs has never been more important as disintermediation drives closer links between the manufacturer and the consumer, fundamentally challenging the retailer to transform the value they create as an intermediary (Alba et al., 1997; Sahay et al., 1998). Therefore, the following is a key question echoed by marketing and IT researchers alike: