Thethird edition of "Electronic Commerce - Framework, Technologies and Applications", a book by IIM Lucknow's Prof. Bharat Bhasker launched The new edition focuses on marketing, SEO & new models and placement strategies for advertising on the internet

IIM Lucknow's Prof. Bharat Bhasker, Professor of Information Technology and Systems has come out with the third edition ofElectronic Commerce: Framework, Technologies and Applications. The new edition focuses on influence of electronic commerceon marketing, discussion on search engine optimisation and discussion on new models and new placement strategies for advertising on the internet.

Electronic Commerce is a blend of technology and application oriented approach. It has multi- tiered architectural framework in explaining e-commerce. The book is strong on internet security issues and electronic payment concepts and a good number of examples from India proving Indian orientation. The orientation follows an integrated approach from the Indian context.

After the successful response of the first two editions of Electronic Commerce, Prof. Bharat Bhasker hascome out with the third edition of the book. Electronic Commerce has been adopted by a large number of institutions as a text or reference book for the electronic commerce courses. Apart from adoption by MBA programs for the electronic commerce courses, a large number of faculty members and students of various Technical Universities have also found it greatly useful for their MCA and B. Tech. courses on electronic commerce.

The role of electronic commerce in the world of business cannot be overemphasised. With the convergence of communication technology and devices, the number of people having access to Internet has been growing at an astonishing pace.The transition from traditional commerce to electronic commerce improves the efficiency of both internal and external processes and hence the advantages offered are applicable to almost every organisation.

To effect this transition, it becomes imperative to understand not only the concept of electronic commerce- advantages, caveats and business models- but also to comprehend its complete framework and technologies. The book attempts to address the subject matter from these perspectives.

A majority of books available in the market either confine themselves to managerial issues that emanate from transitioning to electronic commerce or focus on addressing the technological issues related to developing electronic commerce sites. IIM Lucknow under complete guidance of Prof. Bharat Bhasker initiated a course ‘Internet Applications in Business Management’ for the postgraduate students in 1997. This course follows an integrated approach to make students aware of the technological and managerial aspects of electronic commerce and challenges involved in deploying Internet applications in business organisations. Prof. Bhasker’s search for a suitable textbook for this course motivated him to write this textbook.

The adoption of electronic commerce and e- business technologies is bringing about the major transformation in the way firms conduct business. A glance at corporate horizons reveals that almost all the competitive, leading edge and successful organizations have integrated the electronic commerce technologies in business practices. The unabated convergence of telecommunication and computing has made the access to information stored on network through desktop devices and mobile devices easy and convenient.

Today’s mobile communication handsets have integrated most of the Internet access features that are available in palmtops, laptops and other browsing devices. Therefore, the information that was only available to the user in electronic commerce environment is now also available with mobile commerce environment. However, in the mobile environment several impeding issues related to the limitations of bandwidth, computing power, memory availability, the base technology used for the transmission of voice and data and finally, the size of the screen available for browsing, force the content providers to optimise and tailor the content to make it suitable for the mobile environment.

As the electronic commerce makes deeper inroads into the business practices, it influences almost every element of traditional marketing mix- product, physical distribution, pricing and promotion. In fact, markets are conversations and electronic commerce based on digital communication greatly enhances the efficiency and efficacy of the process of conversation, leading to a greater impact in form of Integrated Marketing Communication.

The book thus throws light upon such issues by including topics on influence of electronic commerce on marketing, search engine marketing and optimisations and emerging trends in advertisement over the Internet.

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About Prof. Bharat Bhasker

Prof. Bhasker is a Senior Professor at IIM Lucknow in the area of Information Technology and Systems. In addition, as a principal investigator, he is responsible for setting up Internet Commerce Research Center in IIM Lucknow, to conduct research and development in the focus area of Internet Commerce with the objective of growth of Internet Commerce in India. He has recently been conferred the Best Professor of IT awardat the 16th Dewang Mehta Business School Awards.

Prof Bhaskerhas worked at NASA for seven years as Group Manager, Hughes STX Inc, 4400 Forbes Blvd., Lanham, MD 20706 at Goddard Space Flight Centre of NASA. He spent another 4 years working with Connectix Corp, Sybase and MDL Information Systems in the US before joining academia.

Prof. Bhasker has rich and diverse experience in academia andhas been a professor at IIM Lucknow since 1996. He has been a Visiting Professor at ESSEC Business School , Paris, France and University of Texas, Dallas, USA. He was a Distinguished Professor at Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea, was a Research Professor at University of California, Riverside, USA and Adjunct Faculty at Information Systems, Univ. of Maryland, College Park.