Virtual business operations, e-commerce & its significance and the case of Turkey: current situation and its potential

Aytaç Gökmen

Abstract

21^st century is the age of high technologies penetrated into business leading to virtual businesses and e-commerce applications combined with electronic business (e-business) structures. Virtual businesses are independent and/or partly dependent organizations that have flexible and agile structures to respond the altering business conditions. Yet, electronic commerce (e-commerce) is the exchange of goods and services over the Internet. Both virtual businesses and e-commerce operations enable organizations to have fluid structures, modify the changing conditions, lower expenses, access to new markets and attain new consumers. The e-commerce applications have also been increasing in Turkey at a great pace but not significantly when compared to the total trade volume. For, the aim of this paper is to focus on the virtual businesses, e-commerce, harmonization of the conventional business structures with e-commerce and emphasize the importance of the e-commerce applications in Turkey resting on dependable national and international publications and data. With respect to the research made, it is possible to state that the e-commerce volume of Turkey is increasing as a remedy to cover the foreign trade deficit, but it is still not sufficient when compared to the total trade volume. Additionally, even though Turkey possesses an efficient e-government mechanism and e-signature law to enhance the volume of its e-commerce, the lack of cooperation among parties and standardization as well as the difficulty in adoption of digital transactions would be issues to be tackled in order to develop e-commerce in Turkey.

Keywords Virtual business – E-commerce – Digital structures – Trade – Economic development – Turkey

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