This book had all the fixin's. I thought the authors knew what they were talking about and did a fairly good job of presenting it to us.

A fine book, one that give a rich understanding of what happened and why.

Sure, Lee Kuan-yiow transformed the situation. However, it is easy to overlook that Singapore was more than just a bastion of British might, even usurping the Sumatra rubber burning industry as it was more efficient than the Dutch efforts, despite desires of the Dutch to keep that money maker inside its borders. Therefore Singapore was basing a good part of its well being in the early part of this century upon the lack of industry on the Dutch side, mainly because it was a modern city hub of the region at that time and one that provided stable reinvestment.

Other examples are given, like the industrial machining might developing about 1930 because it was the next logical step.

All that was needed was for multinationals to give them the steady workload as they had already done most of the jobs before (as was the case industrial wise in Japan, Germany, and similar countries after WWII, the people's skill was the primary mover).

It may seem like a small issue, but it destroys the myth of Singapore being a backwater and bodes ill for any country trying to rise up in short order from absolutely nothing (no examples of such, actually, in modern times, though Australia & N.Z. come closest from the periods of 1787-1900 & 1830-1900). It is interesting that in those cases as was similar with Singapore & Hong Kong, migration of an industrious population was the keystone, beyond natural resources.)

This is an original academic textbook for network economics. Oz Shy starts the book by making some reasonable claims on his discipline at large: scientific papers in economics are too technical and use unnecessary amounts of calculus. Though the book is very analytical and covers a wide scope of issues, prerequisites are at a considerably low level. Because the book uses game theory and logical reasoning instead of calculus, it is accessible to readers with different backgrounds. This book will be in good use at least with the students of economics and engineering.

The book starts from the basic economics of networks and then analyses various networked industries from hardware to software and airlines to social interactions. Most topics stand separately on their own feet. The book ends with a compact presentation on the used game theoretical concepts as appendices.

Being a texbook in economics, however, does not excuse inaccurate and sometimes clearly misleading use of technical terms. I had serious problems understanding why "software" denotes in this book to all kind of digital content including music and movies. In my mind, the word software is restricted to computer programs and associated materials. Also, building models on some specific technology, Shy continuously leaps over the problem of defining its essential features, which should (or should not) be modeled. Taking definitions of technical terms as given (by Shy) can definitely confuse at least engineering students.

In overall, this book might be best characterized as an academic add-on to the well-known business book "Information Rules" by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian. With some inaccurancies and perhaps some time-gap to real world applications, it makes a good textbook. Essential parts are timeless and presentation clear.

A fascinating book about the man who created 'President's Choice,' the private label line that revolutionized the way consumers look at brands. Well-written; it is a pleasurable and worthwhile read for anyone who has an interest in marketing, retail or the food business.

This book functions well as an introduction to the internet. Having a lot of web and internet experience myself, I hungered for more insider tips earlier on in the book. I liked the list of search engines in Skill 5 that talked about how to best use each one. I can see this as being a good reference that will sit on a shelf in my office.

I believe this book to be up to date in terms of its ideas, and to stretch the imagination in terms of certain concepts and their practical aplicability.

As the book is written by IBM personnel, most of the software is slanted toward IBM and thus I would consider a fair reflection of overall developments.

Very handy CD rom included in the back, although mostly test stuff.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading the book

I teach ecommerce at the undergraduate level. I plan to use this book as the backbone for the class. The objectives are tied to the e-Biz+ certification exam from CompTIA, which is a nice feature since CompTIA does a bang-up job on researching the skills needed for entry level employment.

I like the book mainly because it offers the primary business concepts needed by my technical students before they enter the IT job market. My students can't take a lot of business classes, but they still need to know the business side of things. This book gets them the essentials in a one semester format.

Ecommerce is rapidly changing, so it will be tough for a book to keep up. I haven't seen the web site that accompanies the book yet. Hopefully it will be a good supplement to help stay current in a rapidly changing field. The book has a lot of web sites as examples, which can be a mixed blessing since web pages change constantly.

Teachers - the book says it has the usual instructor supplements for classroom teaching as well as online teaching, but I haven't seen them yet. I am using the stuff from the 3rd edition to prepare for my summer class - you will probably need to choose wisely as you review these supplements since they are of mixed quality. I am giving the book 4 stars instead of 5 since I can't vouch for the supplemental materials at this point.

A well presented reference text - recommended - I don't know why nobody else has praised this book here!

This text fills a key gap in our understanding of electronic commerce. Many books on the subject are simply opportunistic - authors promising to deliver knowledge (for example, becoming rich through e-commerce or advice on building a state-of-the-art website) they don't actually seem to possess, and most of these are badly written. Other books are essentially war stories - although often useful for understanding the past, they don't cast much light on the future. A few authors, with a gift for synthesis, offer strategic prescriptions that seem to make sense, and are eminently readable. Very few of this group of authors actually conduct the research they write about, even fewer take a behavioural perspective.

If we think about understanding e-commerce, we soon realise that we have to examine the intersections among technology, economics, and behaviour. While there is no shortage of texts on the enabling technology, it changes so rapidly that any available textbook is likely to be obsolete. Several texts have recently been published that focus on the economics of networks, so that gap seems to be filled. That leaves us with online behaviour, an important niche that this book explores in an interesting way.

Strengths? After a mercifully brief introduction to technology, the text alternates between a demand and supply perspective - Chapter 3 (Web strategy: attracting and retaining visitors) leads us to an examination of the use of web technology to support marketing (Chapter 4), promotion and purchasing (5), and distribution (6). Service quality and pricing are briefly addressed (Chapters 7 and 8), and the book ends with a snappy little review of postmodernism in the context of e-commerce.

Weaknesses? The text is not likely to interest the wirehead audience, even though they really would benefit the most from a change in perspective. The legal issues are left to others, an unfortunate omission from both the business and social science perspective. It is very suitable as the main text for an undergraduate e-commerce survey course, and as a supplementary text for courses in social science, business, Communications, and Law.