Marcel

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Marcel Landeweerd

Marcel Landeweerd, a Master’s student of Business Administration, was invited to present his thesis on e-commerce at the IFIP WG8.6 conference in India. In this article, Marcel shares some of his experiences during his Master’s programme and during the conference in India.

MASTER’S IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

After completing my Bachelor’s in Business and IT, I decided to study Business Administration, with a focus on Information Management. I opted for this course in order to deepen my knowledge in this area and because the programme allowed me to combine studying with entrepreneurship. Even though it was only a one-year programme, the Master’s really gave me the tools I needed to solve key business challenges. The programme combines academic literature with practice in weekly, case-based sessions.

RESEARCHING THE SUCCESS OF AN E-COMMERCE SERVICE

During my graduation project, I focussed on e-commerce success factors. With the internet pervading all aspects of our society, internet companies like Google and Facebook have become a part of our daily lives. Many of them grew from small start-up firms to multinational corporations in a matter of years. But for every internet success story there are countless tales of failure; even within the same firm, some projects achieve tremendous success, while others fail miserably. The focus of my research was on Google – mainly because this company has had a huge number of successful projects as well as many failures. This meant I could compare those projects and explore key success factors for e-commerce.

PRESENTING MY PAPER AT THE IFIP WG8.6 CONFERENCE IN INDIA

Dr Ton Spil suggested I write my thesis for submission to the IFIP WG8.6 conference. When it was accepted, I was both surprised and happy, because the conference was to focus on the successes and failures of IT – a perfect match. I met interesting people from many different backgrounds and cultures. The conference programme was interesting, with different researchers explaining and defending their published research. Topics ranged from very practical to very theoretical ones. My own research, which I presented with the help of Dr Ton Spil, was very well received.

ENTREPRENEUR IN E-COMMERCE

The topic of e-commerce success is close to my heart. I’m currently working on several of my own e-commerce projects. My focus is on supplying web shop owners with the tools they need to improve their businesses. One of these tools is www.pricemotion.nl, which allows web shop owners to benchmark their prices with competitors, so that they can offer their customers the best price. Another project is www.webwinkelkeur.nl. This is a non-profit foundation aimed at making online shopping safe by providing a quality mark for reliable shops.

Read more information about the Master's programme Business Administration

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