National e-Trade Performance Using an Enterprise Architectural Approach

This paper introduces the use of enterprise architecture into the national e-trade infrastructure. It is well known that many leading countries, including Korea, are constructing e-trade platforms, but many business customers are not fully utilizing their systems. The current e-trade promotion activities are investigated and some explanations are given for its low utilization in performance. This e-trade performance problem mainly comes from the lack of an architectural approach in e-trade research and practice and this results in less user-utilization, unbalanced public and private roles, weak communication structures, etc. For these reasons, there could be a high risk of low return on investment in the e-trade infrastructure. This paper suggests the use of an enterprise architecture (EA) approach to improve e-trade performance because it has many advantages, such as to maximize its benefits, to eliminate the problems and to minimize the risks. In this regard, several propositions are suggested and their own validating discussions are made. Finally, some future topics for research are suggested.