E-Business Strategy: External Environment Analysis

External Environment - Macro Environment

• Political and Legal Environment:
  • Influences taxation, company legislation, government subsidies, political stability, internet governance, and interest rates
  • Issues like cross-border regulation and taxation complexity affect e-commerce
• Economic Factors:
  • Market growth, employment, inflation rate, interest rates, and foreign exchange rates
  • Globalization necessitates capabilities like 24-hour service, regulatory expertise, and market understanding
• Social Environment:
  • Factors include population demographics, income distribution, social mobility, and attitudes to work and leisure
• Natural Environment:
  • E-businesses have a low environmental impact compared to traditional businesses
  • Examples include reduced need for physical infrastructure and the rise of 3D printing
• Technological Environment:
  • Technological advances like IoT, AI, and 3D printing create new market opportunities
  • Importance of standards like TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, XML, and JavaScript

Internal Environment - Micro Environment

• Strengths and Weaknesses:
  • Focus on creating a "strategic fit" by aligning internal competencies with external opportunities
• Micro-environment factors:
  • Customers, suppliers, competitors, resellers, and marketing intermediaries
• Competence and Core Competencies:
  • Combination of resources and capabilities
  • Core competencies must be valuable, unique, hard to imitate, and applicable across products/markets

Strategic Thinking in E-Business

• Systematic Thinking:
  • Holistic analysis of internal and external environments
• Creative Thinking:
  • Developing novel solutions for competitive advantage
• Vision-Driven Thinking:
  • Foreseeing future trends and focusing on customer needs
• Market-Oriented Thinking:
  • Understanding and responding to market dynamics and competition

Critical Success Factors

• Technology:
  • Importance of infrastructure, security, and continual updates
• Customers:
  • Identifying and monitoring key segments and communication strategies
• Suppliers and Partners:
  • The internet's impact on supply chains and business models
• Digital literacy and skills training
• Personnel:
  • Use of global virtual teams
• Data, Information, and Knowledge:
  • Handling large amounts of data to create valuable insights
• Management:
  • Importance of data analysis models and setting and monitoring KPIs to track and evaluate strategy performance

Strategic Performance Assessment

• E-business-specific KPIs, such as app downloads

Strategy Formulation

• Conducting internal and external analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis)

This quiz covers the external environment analysis in the context of e-business strategy, focusing on the macro environment, political and legal environments, economic factors, and globalization.