Career Focus

This course is designed to address the challenges of (i) creating, (ii) growing, and (iii) optimizing an e-commerce business for profitability. It is appropriate for:

• Managers in companies with an e-commerce presence;
• Entrepreneurs building online startups;
• Consultants engaged with e-commerce businesses; and
• Investors seeking to evaluate the potential of new business models.

Educational Objectives

The percentage of products that consumers and businesses are buying online rather than offline is growing in virtually all categories. The two main reasons that cut across all categories have to do with convenience and better prices. The challenges for e-commerce players have been how to scale up and be profitable. Many new business models that did not exist as recently as ten years ago have emerged to profitably sell online. This course is intended to (a) help students conceptualize the various different e-commerce business models that exist, as well as build novel models. In addition, students will (b) learn how to grow an e-commerce enterprise quickly and profitably. Finally, students will (c) practice data analyses and data-driven decision making in e-commerce settings.

Cases in many industries will be discussed (e.g., mass merchandising, apparel, beauty, furniture, food, consumer services, media, etc.) and in various life stages of the firm (e.g., startup, early traction, fast growth, maturity).

Course Content and Objectives

The topics relate to the three major classes of e-commerce businesses: e-tailers, i.e., online retailers of goods and services not made by the firm (such as Amazon), direct-to-consumer companies, i.e., online sellers of goods and services made by the firm (or bought from manufacturers) (such as Harrys.com), and two-sided marketplaces, i.e., online matchmakers between supply and demand for goods and services (such as Etsy).

Questions that will be addressed:

• How to acquire customers cheaply and practice growth hacking?
• How to craft a path to profitability?
• How to deliver value to consumers (via assortment, convenience, services, price)?
• How to extract value from consumers?
• How to create and extract value for manufacturers?
• How to compete (or coexist) with Amazon and other E-Commerce Giants?
• How can incumbent firms compete with new business models?
• How to utilize the rich data available in an e-commerce setting for decision making?
• How to choose an e-commerce strategy?

Questions that will not be addressed:

• How to manufacture products to sell online?
• How to build and organize warehouses?
• How to contract with shipping, payment and related firms?
• How to build a website?

Grading:

Grading in the course will be based on class participation (40%), brief group final paper (40%), and individual pre-class answer submission to short cases that include data analysis (20%). These include simple applied data analyses and are designed for both novices and students with data analytics experience. No prior data analytics experience or programing skills are required, they can be successfully completed using Excel.

Final Paper:

Students work in small groups to write a memo that takes one of the following approaches or addresses a topic approved by the instructor:

• Using course frameworks, develop a new e-commerce business model in any industry of choice and in any portion of the customer value chain.
• Using course frameworks, analyze an existing e-commerce firm and identify main challenges and potential solutions.
• Propose a new e-commerce case: identify a specific company and main challenges.

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