Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
Global E-Commerce
The impacts of telecommunications on businesses include a varieties of activities
often lumped together under the term e-commerce, which includes both business-
to-business (B2B) transactions as well as those linking firms to their customers
(B2C) and customers-to-businesses (C2B) (Brunn and Leinbach 2001 ). E-commerce
takes a variety of forms, including electronic data interchange (e.g., inventory data,
digital invoices and contracts, purchase orders, and product updates), Internet
recruiting and advertising, web-based banking and stock trading, electronic retail
shopping and digital gambling. For the most part, this activity is restricted to large
commercial actors, although many observers hope that the Internet will open
opportunities for small and medium sized establishments to reach out to national and
global markets. Digital convergence of hitherto distinct media has opened new
possibilities in Internet video and telephony. Advocates maintain that the internet
will open opportunities for undercapitalized small and medium sized establishments
(SMEs) to access national and global markets.
This chapter explores the geography of e-commerce in several ways. It begins
by pointing to the continued role of global cities in the face of the space of flows.
Next it sketches the contours of electronic funds transfer systems, the means by
which enormous volumes of money circulate through the world's fiber optics
networks. Third, it summarizes the state of offshore banking. Fourth, it turns to the
question of international back office and call center relocations, in which corpo-
rations use the internet to relocate clerical and data entry functions to developing
countries. Fifth, it explores the world of internet telephony, or Voice Over Internet
Protocol (VOIP). Sixth, it examines some ways in which the internet has affected
retailing and distance learning. Finally, it offers a regional survey of global
e-commerce to highlight the geographically uneven and contextualized nature of
e-commerce, which is shaped by a multitude of regional and local policies,
cultures, and economic dynamics.
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