Managing Globally with Information Technology

In order to study the power and challenges of e-business in enhancing competitive advantage for the auto-industry, an electronic survey has been conducted in the automotive companies in Asia. The survey developed through the web which had the advantage of reduced cost and reduced response time compared with mail-out surveys or interview (Benjamin, 1995). At the first stage research objectives and research scope were clearly defined. The conceptual framework for the survey was built around four stages of e-business illustrated by Arthur D. Little's Michael Taylor as follows (Varney and McCarthy, 1996):

• Stage 1: Companies digitize internal data. It is a publishing model without a significant impact on business processes.

• Stage 2: Companies start thinking about re-engineering a part of the business process. Integration with back-end systems begins.

• Stage 3: Companies move into original content, which may be highly interactive. With the goal of one-to-one marketing, a company seeks to develop profiles of users accessing its sites so they can be treated uniquely.

• Stage 4: Companies that are fully enabled, seek to achieve dynamic segmentation, in addition to developing basic user profiles. Specifically, segmentation of site visitors is done in real time, based on user activity. The internet's ability to function as a micromarketing channel is also questioned during the survey (Raisinghani, 2000).

The survey covered 10 countries across Asia Pacific and was conducted in four different languages—English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese—over a 16-week period. In total, 112 responses were received from major OEMs, component suppliers, dealers and portals. Designing the research questions and their measurement scales were the next step. Key questions on automotive e-business development survey in Asia were as follows:

• What are the key drivers of Asian automotive e-business strategies?

• How far along is e-business infrastucture in Asian automotive companies?

• How much e-business investment is being planned in the next five years?

• What are the e-business challenges foreseen for implementation in Asia?

• Will e-business scale in Asia reach Western levels in the next five years?

• How will the e-business roles change in the auto B2B/B2C space in Asia?

After pre-testing the questionnaire to confirm that the questions and their measurements are appropriate, correct and understandable, a web form was designed to contain the research questions. A web server was developed to collect and process the research data electronically. As an extention to the web server, server scripts were also programmed in order to process and analyse the research data. The result of the survey shed some important insights to the above key questions.