Electronic Commerce

http://kogan.rutgers.edu/ec-phd

# 26:198:621:01 Index: 55473

A Ph.D. course offered in the spring of 2009

by the Department of Accounting, Business Ethics, and Information Systems
Rutgers Business School - Newark and New Brunswick
Rutgers University

Prof. Alexander Kogan
300F Ackerson (Newark), (973) 353-1064
 kogan@rutgers.edu

Location:

Day:

Time:

Newark Campus; ACK 106

Thursday

10:00 a.m. - 12:50 p.m.

Overview: This course covers the theoretical foundations, implementation problems, and research issues of the emerging area of electronic commerce. It discusses technological, conceptual and methodological aspects of electronic commerce. The course format combines lectures, seminar presentations and classroom discussions.

The course will utilize the Blackboard online facilities, which can be found at:

https://blackboard.newark.rutgers.edu/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_57204_1

Coursework: The coursework includes presentations of research articles, in-class discussions, and a final course project researching one of the problems of electronic commerce. All after hours communications related to this course are expected to be conducted over the Internet.

Every student is required to study and briefly summarize in writing ALL required articles for every lecture, and post the summaries to the appropriate Blackboard forum before the beginning of each class. Every student will be assigned ONE of the required articles to prepare an extended summary (about two pages long) as well as a class presentation of the article. Both the extended summary and the presentation should also be posted to the appropriate Blackboard forum before the beginning of each class. One of the students (chosen randomly during the class) has to present the article in class. All students have to participate in discussing the presented articles and be prepared to (possibly) replace the main discussant. Extended summaries and presentations of additional readings can be prepared for extra credit.

It is absolutely essential to start working on the course research project as soon as possible. Every student is required to prepare a three page long proposal for the course research project, and submit this proposal for instructor's evaluation by March 12, 2009. The course research project should be prepared in the form of a term paper, and presented during the last meeting of the class on April 30, 2009. Both the research paper and the presentation should also be posted to the appropriate Blackboard forum before the last meeting of the class. For examples of term papers done by students in the previous years, see final projects Blackboard forums following the link below:

Blackboard Forums

Grading: The presentations of articles, the course project and the final exam will provide the basis for the course grade:

50%

Article presentations and in-class discussions

30%

Course project

20%

Final exam

The course is supported by the RAMS e-mailing list ec-phd-list. The list membership is automatically synchronized with the current class roster. Make sure that your current e-mail address is available in the Rutgers online directory. To post a message to the list, e-mail it to

ec-phd-list@rams.rutgers.edu

All the postings to this list are permanently archived and available from

http://rams.rutgers.edu/archive/archive.cgi

Please note that your postings should be appropriate for this course.

This course does not have any required texbooks. Any appropriate textbooks, as well as online materials, can be used for studying the basics. I recommend the following two elementary textbooks for getting up to speed fast.

Background Readings:
  1. Douglas E. Comer. The Internet Book: Everything You Need to Know About Computer Networking and How the Internet Works. 4th Ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2007 (ISBN 0-13-233553-0). http://vig.prenhall.com/catalog/academic/product/0,1144,0132335530,00.html
  2. Gary P.Schneider. Electronic Commerce, Eight Edition. Course Technology - Cengage Learning, Boston, MA, 2009 (ISBN 1423903056). http://academic.cengage.com/cengage/student.do?product_isbn=9781423903055&codeid=Z431&disciplinenumber=205

The tentative list of topics to be covered in this course:

  1. 1/22/2009 Introduction to electronic commerce, telecommunications infrastructure, and Internet technology; client-server architecture of Internet applications, standard Internet services, HTTP

    2. Required readings:
    1. Networked Nation: Broadband in America 2007, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Washington, DC, January 2008. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/reports/2008/NetworkedNation.html
    2. OECD Ministerial Meeting: The Future of the Internet Economy, The Future of the Internet Economy: A Statistical Profile, Seoul, Korea, 17-18 June 2008. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/56/40827598.pdf

    Additional readings:

  2. 1/29/2009 Markup languages (HTML, XML, etc.), dynamic Web content, security and cryptography


  3. 2/5/2009 Problems of Internet technology: network architecture and quality of service

    4. Required readings:
    1. Marjory S. Blumenthal and David D. Clark, "Rethinking the Design of the Internet: The End-to-End Arguments vs. the Brave New World", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Vol. 1, No. 1, August 2001, Pages 70–109. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=383034.383037
    2. Anindya Datta, Kaushik Dutta, Helen Thomas and Debra VanderMeer, "World Wide Wait: A Study of Internet Scalability and Cache-Based Approaches to Alleviate It", Management Science, Vol. 49, Issue 10, October 2003, Pages 1425–1444. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/49/10/1425
    3. Stephanie Wood and Samir Chatterjee, "Network Quality of Service for the Enterprise: A Broad Overview", Information Systems Frontiers, 4 (1) (2002), 63–84. http://www.springerlink.com/content/1572-9419

    Additional readings:

  4. 2/12/2009 Internet access and services: measuring and pricing the Internet

    5. Required readings:
    1. A. M. Odlyzko, "Internet pricing and the history of communications", Computer Networks, 36 (5-6) (2001), 493-517. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13891286. Also see http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications1b.pdf
    2. Lee W. McKnight and Jahangir Boroumand, "Pricing Internet services: after flat rate", Telecommunications Policy, 24 (6-7) (2000), 565-590. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03085961
    3. Gareth Davies, Michael Hardt and Frank Kelly, "Come the revolution—network dimensioning, service costing and pricing in a packet switched environment", Telecommunications Policy, 28 (5-6) (2004), 391–412. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03085961

    Additional readings:

  5. 2/19/2009 Digital economy and e-business models

    6. Required readings:
    1. Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu and Michael D. Smith, "Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety at Online Booksellers", Management Science, Volume 49, Issue 11, November 2003, pp. 1580-1596. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/49/11/1580
    2. Kevin Zhu and Kenneth L. Kraemer, "Post-Adoption Variations in Usage and Value of E-Business by Organizations: Cross-Country Evidence from the Retail Industry", Information Systems Research, 16 (1) (2005), 61–84. http://isr.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/1/61.
    3. Anitesh Barua, Prabhudev Konana, Andrew B. Whinston, and Fang Yin, "An Empirical Investigation of Net-Enabled Business Value", MIS Quarterly, 28 (4) (2004), 585-620. http://www.misq.org/archivist/vol/no28/Issue4/Barua.html.

    Additional readings:

  6. 2/26/2009 Security of Internet hosts and networks, public key infratsructure, safety of e-commerce applications

    7. Required readings:
    1. Fariborz Farahmand, Shamkant B. Navathe, Gunter P. Sharp and Philip H. Enslow, "A Management Perspective on Risk of Security Threats to Information Systems", Information Technology and Management, Volume 6, Issue 2-3, April 2005, pp. 203-225. http://www.springerlink.com/content/1573-7667/
    2. Simon Byers, Aviel D. Rubin, David Kormann, "Defending against an Internet-based attack on the physical world", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Volume 4, Issue 3, August 2004, pp. 239 - 254. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1013202.1013203
    3. Andrew D. Fernandes, "Risking "trust" in a public key infrastructure: old techniques of managing risk applied to new technology", Decision Support Systems, 31 (3) (2001), pp. 303–322. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01679236

    Additional readings:

  7. 3/5/2009 Electronic payment systems

    8. Required readings:
    1. Caroline Paunov and Graham Vickery, Online Payment Systems For E-Commerce, OECD Directorate For Science, Technology And Industry, Committee For Information, Computer And Communications Policy, Working Party on the Information Economy, 18-Apr-2006. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/37/19/36736056.pdf
    2. Vishwas Patil and R. K. Shyamasundar, "e-coupons: An Efficient, Secure and Delegable Micro-Payment System", Information Systems Frontiers, 7 (4-5) (2005), 371-389. http://www.springerlink.com/content/1572-9419
    3. Kar Yan Tam and Shuk Ying Ho, "A Smart Card Based Internet Micropayment Infrastructure: Technical Development and User Adoption", Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Volume 17, Issue 2, May 2007, pages 145 - 173. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a788067210~db=all.

    Additional readings:

  8. 3/12/2009 Trust and reputation in e-commerce

    9. FINAL RESEARCH PROJECT PROPOSAL IS DUE

    Required readings:
    1. Harrison McKnight, Vivek Choudhury and Charles Kacmar, "Developing and Validating Trust Measures for e-Commerce: An Integrative Typology", Information Systems Research, Volume 13, Issue 3, September 2002, pp. 334–359. http://isr.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/334
    2. Paul A. Pavlou and David Gefen, "Building Effective Online Marketplaces with Institution-Based Trust", Information Systems Research, Volume 15, Issue 1, March 2004, pp. 37–59. http://isr.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/37
    3. Chrysanthos Dellarocas, "The Digitization of Word of Mouth: Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms", Management Science, Volume 49, Issue 10, October 2003, pp. 1407-1424. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/49/10/1407

    Additional readings:

  9. 3/26/2009 E-business intelligence: Data mining, Web merchandising and recommender systems

    10. Required readings:
    1. Juhnyoung Lee, Mark Podlaseck, Edith Schonberg, Robert Hoch, "Visualization and Analysis of Clickstream Data of Online Stores for Understanding Web Merchandising", Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 5 (1-2) (2001), 59-84. http://www.springerlink.com/content/1573-756X/
    2. Ron Kohavi, Llew Mason, Rajesh Parekh and Zijian Zheng, "Lessons and Challenges from Mining Retail E-Commerce Data", Machine Learning, 57 (1-2) (2004), 83-113. http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/1573-0565/
    3. Saverio Perugini, Marcos Andre Goncalves and Edward A. Fox, "Recommender Systems Research: A Connection-Centric Survey", Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, 23 (2) (2004), 107-143. http://www.springerlink.com/content/1573-7675/

    Additional readings:

  10. 4/2/2009 Business-to-consumer e-commerce: online marketing and selling, information goods

    11. Required readings:
    1. Yannis Bakos and Erik Brynjolfsson, "Bundling and Competition on the Internet: Aggregation Strategies for Information Goods", Marketing Science, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 2000, pp. 63–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/193259
    2. Jianan Wu, Victor J. Cook Jr., and Edward C. Strong, "A Two-Stage Model of the Promotional Performance of Pure Online Firms", Information Systems Research, Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2005, pp. 334-351. http://isr.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/4/334
    3. Nelson Granados, Alok Gupta, and Robert J. Kauffman, "Designing online selling mechanisms: Transparency levels and prices", Decision Support Systems, Volume 45, Issue 4, November 2008, Pages 729-745. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01679236

    Additional readings:

  11. 4/9/2009 Electronic markets and auctions on the Internet

    12. Required readings:
    1. G. Anandalingam, Robert W. Day, and S. Raghavan, "The Landscape of Electronic Market Design", Management Science, 51 (3) (2005), 316-327. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/51/3/316
    2. Christina Soh, M. Lynne Markus, and Kim Huat Goh, "Electronic Marketplaces and Price Transparency: Strategy, Information Technology, and Success", MIS Quarterly, Volume 30, Number 3, September 2006, 705-723. http://www.misq.org/archivist/vol/no30/issue3/SohMarkusGoh.html
    3. Uri Simonsohn and Dan Ariely , "When Rational Sellers Face Nonrational Buyers: Evidence from Herding on eBay", Management Science, Vol. 54, No. 9, September 2008, pp. 1624-1637. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/54/9/1624

    Additional readings:

  12. 4/16/2009 Intelligent agents in electronic commerce

    13. Required readings:
    1. Robert J. Kauffman, Salvatore T. March, Charles A. Wood, "Design principles for long-lived Internet agents", International Journal of Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance & Management, Volume 9, Issue 4, December 2000, 217-236. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jtoc?ID=5697
    2. Joris Claessens, Bart Preneel, Joos Vandewalle, "(How) can mobile agents do secure electronic transactions on untrusted hosts? A survey of the security issues and the current solutions", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Vol. 3, No. 1, February 2003, Pages 28 - 48. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=643477.643479
    3. Mark E. Nissen and Kishore Sengupta, "Incorporating Software Agents into Supply Chains: Experimental Investigation with a Procurement Task", MIS Quarterly, Volume 30, Number 1, March 2006, 145-166. http://www.misq.org/archivist/vol/no30/issue1/NissenSengupta.html

    Additional readings:

  13. 4/23/2009 Business-to-business e-commerce and supply chain management

    14. Required readings:
    1. Joakim Kalvenes and Amit Basu , "Design of Robust Business-to-Business Electronic Marketplaces with Guaranteed Privacy", Management Science, Vol. 52, No. 11, November 2006, pp. 1721-1736. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/52/11/1721
    2. Jayashankar M. Swaminathan and Sridhar R. Tayur, "Models for Supply Chains in E-Business", Management Science, Volume 49, Issue 10, October 2003, pp. 1387–1406. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/49/10/1387
    3. W. M. P. van der Aalst and Akhil Kumar, "XML-Based Schema Definition for Support of Interorganizational Workflow", Information Systems Research, Volume 14, Issue 1, March 2003, pp. 23–46. http://isr.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/23

    Additional readings:

  14. 4/30/2009 Presentation of course research projects


  15. 5/7/2009 Final Exam

Additional Readings:

  1. (FB) Warwick Ford and Michael S. Baum. Secure Electronic Commerce: Building the Infrastructure for Digital Signatures and Encryption, 2nd Ed., Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001 (ISBN 0-13-027276-0, http://vig.pearsoned.com/store/product/1,3498,store-562_isbn-0130272760,00.html)

  2. (CSW) Soon-Yong Choi, Dale O. Stahl, and Andrew B. Whinston. Economics of Electronic Commerce. Macmillan Technical Publishing, Indianapolis, IN, 1997 (ISBN 1-57870-014-0, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578700140)

  3. (GS) Simson Garfinkel with Gene Spafford. Web Security, Privacy & Commerce, 2nd Edition, O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN 0-596-00045-6, http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596000455/)