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The world is in the midst of an all purpose technological revolution based on information technology (IT), defined here as computers, computer software, and telecommunications equipment. The macroeconomic benefits of the IT revolution are already apparent in some economies. Historical experience has shown that such revolutions have often been accompanied by financial booms and busts, and the IT revolution has been no exception. But, while spending on IT goods is likely to remain weak in the immediate future, as past overinvestment unwinds, the longer-term benefits for the global economy are likely to continue, or even accelerate, in the years to come. While technological change is an ongoing process, there are periods during which technological progress is especially rapid, resulting in new products and falling prices of existing products that have widespread uses in the rest of the economy (Brynjolfsson & Kahin, 2000). Such periods are generally identified with all-purpose technological revolutions. The effects of such revolutions have generally occurred in three (often overlapping) main stages. First, technological change raises productivity growth in the innovating sector (Nordhaus & William, 2001); second, falling prices encourage capital deepening; and, finally, there can be significant reorganization of production around the capital goods that embody the new technology. IT has stimulated extraordinary investment in goods such as computer chips, semiconductors, and telecommunications equipments, resulting in significant capital deepening. This capital deepening has led, in some countries, to acceleration in overall productivity growth and may be encouraging changes in the organization of production, which could lead to further improvements in productivity growth (Lee et al., 2001).
The last decade has seen an explosion in the growth and the use of the Internet. New terms have appeared to more accurately distinguish the different types of business transactions that take place on the Internet (Litan et al., 2000). One of these new terms is “e-commerce” (EC). The EC can be defined as the exchange transactions which take place over the Internet primarily using digital technology. This encompasses all activities supporting market transactions including marketing, customers’ support, delivery and payment (Schniederjans et al., 2002). One important problem in EC marketing activities is the process of building and maintaining customer relationships through online activities to facilitate the exchange of ideas, products, and services that satisfy the goals of both parties (Kwan et al., 2005). Thus EC marketing teams devote most of their time to develop indicators to efficiently monitor their activities and adapt their business strategy dynamically. The specificity of e-marketing is related to the Internet and the WWW technologies. Indeed, faced with important amounts of information and a multitude of potential choices on the Web, indecisive Internet consumers tend to turn to the opinions and experiences of other customers to make their choices. A new type of websites has thus appeared to support this emerging sharing process. They propose to mediate, support, or automate the everyday process of sharing recommendations between cyber-consumers' communities (McNee et al., 2003; Schafer et al., 2001).