Emerging Concepts in E-Business and Extended Products

To compete in the competitive global marketplace, manufacturers and suppliers have to come up with novel ways of forming alliances to sell their wares. The extended and virtual enterprise concepts have been acknowledged as important paradigms in the modern business environment. Information and communication technologies and the developments around the Internet have brought these issues into sharp focus for managers and researchers alike. Additionally, the success of the Internet has triggered the evolution of a variety of e-phenomena that has helped the evolution of many new ideas and strategies in order to improve the everyday business processes of an enterprise. Buzzwords such as e-commerce, e-business and e-procurement illustrate this trend. Consequently, the analysis of networks and the opportunities to produce products in a collaborative way has become a key issue for both practitioners and researchers.