E-Commerce in Agribusiness

Electronic commerce (E-commerce) is a generic term for an array of informational technologies that ushered in a host of paradigms that became known as the New Economy during the 1990s. These informational technologies touted increased efficiencies in production through business-to-business (B2B) marketing as well as through direct marketing to consumers (business-to-consumer or B2C marketing). During the 1990s a variety of each business model emerged, but by 2002 a much smaller number proved to be successful business models. The 18 chapters presented in this volume analyze a variety of factors influencing the successes and failures of agricultural E-commerce. Many of the chapters develop theoretical models of innovation based on Schumpeterian competition and on the New Institutional Economics. Schumpeter viewed the economy as periods of static equilibria (or circular flow) in which consumption and production trends were relatively stable, although punctuated by periods of innovation (or creative destruction). In these periods of innovation, new goods or new production technologies replaced old consumption and production patterns. Thus, the New Economy spawned by E-commerce could represent a Schumpeterian event. Given that an innovative event occurred, insights from the New Institutional Economics then describe the possible changes in vertical integration or markets that resulted from changes in information technologies. Following this paradigm, various chapters in this book describe marketing channels in which the new information technologies yielded viable changes in market structure. In these cases, new informational technologies allowed consumers to interact directly with agribusinesses or farmers. However, these success stories are relatively few. In most cases, consumers required experiential signals when buying agricultural produce. In other cases, E-commerce simply augmented existing B2C channels.Schmitz, Troy G. is the author of 'E-Commerce in Agribusiness ', published 2005 under ISBN 9780944961070 and ISBN 094496107X.