The Effect of E-Commerce on the Integration of IT Structure and Brand Architecture

A company's information technology (IT) structure and its brand architecture are intended to minimize transaction costs both within the organization and between the organization and its customers. Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce fundamentally alters the structure of those transaction costs relevant to the IT structure and the brand architecture. We conducted a survey among 102 chief information officers and chief marketing officers in 67 of the 100 most important B2C enterprises in Austria. The results show that companies typically implement a certain set of changes in the IT structure and the brand architecture if B2C e-commerce is highly important to them and that these changes result in a stronger integration within and between the IT structure and the brand architecture. B2C e-commerce projects thus require closely aligned conceptual, organizational and financial measures in both areas.