E-Business Models Paper

e-Business Models Paper

The "level of commitment to e-business" pyramid is a graphical representation of how involved a company is in e-business. The pyramid is broken into four sections with the lowest level of e-business commitment at the bottom and the highest level of commitment at the top. The lowest level of commitment is the Activity level, followed by the Business Process level, the Enterprise level, and finally the Pure Play level. This paper will analyze each level of commitment by a company that has been assigned.

Amazon (Pure Play)

Amazon is considered in the Pure Play level of commitment because it is a pure dot-com company that was created based on its Internet presence (Straus, 2003). Amazon started its web presence in July 1995 and completed its IPO in May 1997 (www.amazon.com). It does not have brick-and-mortar stores that people could walk into, so the only way to interact with Amazon is electronically. According to their website, Amazon's vision is to: "Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online". This vision statement alone is almost enough to categorize Amazon in the Pure Play level. Their only goal of the company is to provide the online level of service.

Target (Enterprise)

Target is categorized as an Enterprise level of commitment. They participate in e-commerce activities that complement their brick and mortar stores. Target was started in 1902 and then they started their e-commerce activities in 1999 (www.target.com, 2003). According to Straus, e-commerce refers to selling goods over the Internet either in one transaction or in many transactions over time (Straus, 2003). Target is the typical example of what many people expect when they think about shopping online. They think of existing businesses that now provide the ability to purchase online and have the items shipped directly to themselves. Many other retail businesses have this sort of setup, including: Wal-Mart, Sears, JC Penny's, and others.