A Three-Tiered Approach to Global E-Commerce: Experiences of Nu Skin International

Abstract

Access to the world enabled by the Internet facilitates internationalization as never before. However, lack of a coherent global Internet strategy can relegate any company to a strictly provincial “neighborhood” status. Globalization strategies and tactics should therefore be of central concern to all enterprises. To research the strategic issues involved in Internet-based globalization, we embarked on a case study. Our goal is to explore how the Internet and its related technologies can serve to help organizations better deal with the challenges of conducting global business. Our research enabled us to identify a set of heuristic “rules of thumb” that might be used to support Internet-based globalization efforts. In our study we discuss the many challenges to establishing successful global enterprises. We then introduce a model for understanding global business requirements in the e-commerce age. We conclude by analyzing a case study to initially validate our theoretical model and summarize our findings.