Sam Lubbe has spent more than 18 years in the field of Information Systems and is head of the IT Department at Cape Technikon in South Africa. He specializes in the area of e-commerce in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Following the publication of "The Economic and Social Impacts of E-Commerce" Idea Group Publishing conducted the following interview with Eubbe.

Idea Group Publishing: How can developing countries benefit from using e-commerce?

Sam Lubbe: The widespread adoption of e-commerce is especially important for developing countries because it can create opportunities for improvement of international cooperation, promote competitions and diffusion of key technologies, efficient social and infrastructure services, a competitive communications sector, and increased buyer productivity.

IGP: What are the various adverse effects that have accompanied the advent of the Internet and e-Commerce revolution?

SL: One of the adverse effects is that it empowers the employee to the extent that they can become obsessed with the power. Some of the other concerns are privacy, consumer protection, and security of credit card purchases, displacement of workers, and having a negative impact on the quality of work life.

IGP: What is the future of the Internet as an e-commerce medium?

SL: E-commerce will reshape methods of the business world. Government, large corporations, medium and small business now have to conduct their electronic activities in an accountable, transparent and well-structured way.

IGP: What is the economic impact on e-commerce and how could this be used to create new markets and to improve the strategic alignment of the organization.

SL: The problem is that in the past, many organizations did not align their IT and organizational strategies properly. With the arrival of e-commerce, new alignment problems were created and were increased because of the leverage effect. This chapter discusses the impact of the alignment problems and explains how it can be rectified.

IGP: What is an effective online customer service strategy that will work?

SL: The effectiveness of the online customer service will vary and, depending on the type of business the company is involved in, the usage of different types of tools in this arena have proven to be more useful than others. An effective strategy will mean satisfied customers, a higher customer retention rate and higher revenue.

IGP: How will the qualities of data affect the new economy?

SL: The rapid spread of connectivity via the WWW has altered the way in which organizations deal with customers and the data that is being obtained. The methods that executives adopt to be informed also changed. This is the reason why executive information systems had increased in importance.

IGP: How can e-lcarning affect e-commerce and how can it be used to improve the adoption of e-commerce in developing countries?

SL: E-learning can help set a trend to ensure that people are becoming more computer literate and eventually help with the accepting of e-commerce as a way of doing home- hopping. It is a trend that needs to be improved in developing countries, otherwise e-commerce will only reach a certain segment of the population. It should be regarded as a social tool that can help improve the situation.

IGP: How does the theory that exists affect the developers of e-commerce systems?

SL: There are many cognitive theories that can affect the e-commerce system adversely and it should be kept in mind when people develop systems.

The Economic and Social Impacts of E-Commerce is available from Idea Group Inc. at www.idea-group.com.