Introduction

Doing business electronically became quite the vogue in the late 1990s, as the idea captured the attention and imaginations of everyone from business and political leaders to individual consumers. To most people, the term electronic business (or just e-business ) meant having to develop a presence on the web, sometimes with a sound business strategy and execution, but many times just to keep up with consumer expectations and competitors . In 1999, Time Magazine named Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, as its Man of the Year, joining such notables as Charles Lindberg and Martin Luther King, Jr.The technology dazzled and the possibilities seemed endless.

By the year 2001, however, a new sense of realism replaced the initial hype as the dot.com bubble deflated. With the sharp drop in value of technology stock prices, and closing or consolidation of hundreds of web-based businesses that had seemed so promising just a few months earlier, it became increasingly clear that using the Internet for business required as much good business sense as new technology.