An Analysis of the Existing Literature on B2C E-commerce

Abstract

With the arrival of the Internet and its commercialization, a new medium of commerce known as electronic-commerce emerged in the modern global economy. E-commerce has seen a small start, a sharp rise, and a setback followed by revival chances in a great way. Research in E-commerce has several issues such as recent emergence, rapid changes and variation in behavior in similar contexts, attention of media and marketing interests, distortion of terminology and data, lack of familiarities with e-commerce technologies by management scholars, and the lack of established instruments and research approaches. Given this background, this article classifies the B2C e-commerce literature, largely in the Indian context, ranging from the period from 1997 to 2011, into ten distinct categories as organizational viewpoint of B2C e-commerce, implications for policy makers in e-commerce, global e-commerce, comparison of e-commerce among countries, consumer behavior in e-commerce, promotions and marketing strategies in e-commerce, personalized architectures for e-commerce customers, e-banking and e-insurance, and tourism, Internet, and services through electronic media. Emphasis has been laid on the post 2005 literature due to its recent nature. Furthermore, scope for future research studies is suggested in all the ten categories. This work will be of immense help to upcoming researchers in the field of e-commerce.