GEST3032-1 : eBusiness and eCommerce

Study Programmes 2016-2017

GEST3032-1

eBusiness and eCommerce

Duration :

30h Th

Number of credits :

Master in management (120 ECTS)		5
Master in business engineering (120 ECTS)		5

Lecturer :

Ashwin Ittoo

Language(s) of instruction :

English language

Organisation and examination :

Teaching in the first semester, review in January

Units courses prerequisite and corequisite :

Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program

Learning unit contents :

The main aim of this course is to equip students with a sound and solid knowledge and expertise in E-Commerce and E-Business concepts and technologies. These latter subjects are of utmost importance to most business organizations and the course intends to train and educate the students so that they can exploit E-Commerce and E-Business concepts to create value-added activities.

In addition, this course also has a practical component. The aim here is to expose students to the technical/technological concepts that underlie E-Commerce systems. Students will have the opportunity to apply the practical/programming concepts to develop a full-fledge E-Commerce application.
Sample topics include:

E-Commerce Types:

B2B
B2C
G2C
...
E-Governement and trends

E-Commerce Business Models:

Business model elements
Importance of revenue models
Types of revenue models (subscription, pay-per-view,...)

Consumer Behavior:

Consumer behavior model and factors (social, cultural, psychological)
Consumer buying process (from problem recognition and information search to post-purchase decision)
Online (and offline) tools for supporting consumer behavior
Clickstream behavior and analysis
Net promotor score (NPS)
Online trust

Merchandising:

Operational and marketing aspects (stock management, sales)
Case-study

E-Supply Chain Management (E-Business):

Suppy chain management (SCM) vs. E-SCM

E-Procurement
ERP Integration
E-Logistics
Collaborative Design and Product Development

A/B Testing:

Relevance of A/B Testing in E-commerce applications
Chi-squared test for A/B Testing
Examples in R and Excel

Security aspects of E-Commerce/E-Business:

Introduction to data encryptions
Security in payment systems

Practical:

Introduction to client-server computing
Client-side vs. server side programming
PhP programming: Revision (basic constructs: loops, conditionals), database connections, session variables
SQL statements (select, update, delete)

Learning outcomes of the learning unit :

Relate the concepts covered in the lectures to real-world business activities
Uncover new business opportunities via the application and implementation of E-Commerce and E-Business concepts and technologies
Establish an E-Commerce/E-Business strategy to optimize an organization's activities
Communicate efficiently about E-Commerce/E-Business projects to various stakeholders, internal and external to the organizations
Perform independent research to keep up-to-date with recent development in the field and to adapt his/her managerial practice to the needs of a fast-evolving world.

Prerequisite knowledge and skills :

We assume a basic knowledge on Internet (similar to the one obtained after attending the courses in bachelor at HEC-ULg). For the project, a basic knowledge of HTML and PhP is an asset.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods :

This year, the students will have to create a small E-Commerce Website

Mode of delivery (face-to-face ; distance-learning) :

Lectures and readings
Case studies
Demonstrations and exercices on computer
Real cases presented by firms (to be determined)