Research Paper on:
E-COMMERCE AND THE EUROPEAN AIRLINES

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
When I came to the Internet or EDI, most consumers simply were not aware that such things existed. Today however, the Internet  and the World Wide Web have insinuated themselves into our society -- meaning that many consumers are turning to the Internet to purchase goods and services. As a result,  many businesses are beginning to incorporate strategies to become successful in the area of e-commerce. The airline industry is no different in  this endeavor -- although experts have pointed out that U.S. and European airlines havent yet tapped the power of e-commerce to most revenue streams, that time will come soon.  This paper will analyze two things: e-commerce and how the European airline industry can use this tool to boost revenue streams and increase  the customer load factor. E-COMMERCE - AN OVERVIEW What exactly is e-commerce? To most people, e-commerce conjures up images of people  going online to purchase goods and services. But in its most basic sense, electronic commerce involves "individuals as well as organizations in gauging and a variety of electronic transactions, without  paper documents, using computer and telecommunications networks" (Czuchry et al, 2001). In other words, the person picking up the phone to dial an 800-number or toll-free number to order a  product or service is engaging in a form of the e-commerce. In the area of computer transactions, the definition of e-commerce has  actually focused on Electronic Data Interchange, also known as EDI (Czuchry et al, 2001). EDI for many years was the primary means of conducting business electronically "between two entities having