Insegnamento a.a. 2022-2023

Classes: 31 (II sem.)

Instructors:
Class 31: DEBORAH CAROLINA RACCAGNI

If until few years ago, e-commerce was seen as an "add-on component" by companies (brand and retailers) to try to broaden their scope of action/sales and to differentiate themselves from competitors, nowadays it has become a fundamental component for companies that want to guarantee sustainability to their own business. Knowing the business models that characterize the world of ecommerce, as well as the underlying logic and mechanisms for their management become fundamental requirements for those who will enter the professional area in the next future. It is necessary to go beyond the basic sharing of languages and it becomes increasingly necessary to master skills and critical reading of the online sales context.

Ecommerce business models

Omnichannel strategy

Digital Merchandising processes: assortment strategies based on analytics 

Prices management (data driven pricing and hyper-dynamic pricing)

UX web design

Content management (marketing, product, information)

Online Customer Service

Buying process: Digital Trade Marketing

Supply chain – logistic & reverse logistic

Flow management (orders, clients, stock, billing)

Technological platforms to support the online business

Online payment systems  

eCRM

P&L Management

eCommerce Website Traffic generation through digital metrics

eCommerce KPIs

Recommendation systems

Marketing Automation for eCommerce

At the end of the course student will be able to...

At the end of the course the student

• will be able to know the models needed to understand the evolution of eCommerce and, data-driven retail in general
• will have understood and developed the skills required to manage an eCommerce service and its evolution
• will have grasped the value of analytics as a decision-making tool in eCommerce: from assortment, to category, to pricing, to promotions.
• will have learnt how to assume an omnichannel perspective in sales management

 

At the end of the course student will be able to...

At the end of the course the student will be able

• to compare the different business model alternatives for eCommerce and,
• to choose and design the best one for "their" business
• to discuss about eCommerce strategies and
• to hypothesize and test their optimization
• to demostrate the relevance of analytics and data for eCommerce management

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Exercises (exercises, database, software etc.)
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Group assignments

Guest speaker's talks - eCommerce practitioners from different industries will take part to the course with individual contributions in order to bring their personal experience and support students in understanding the different profession functions and ecommerce carrier perspectives
Exercises - will allow students to concretely understand the different tools presented throughout the course.
Case studies - will be used to showcase best and worst practices and open debate around them to deepen the understanding of opportunities and challenges for companies managing online sales

Group assignment - will allow students to put into practice what they have learnt and develop several soft skills mainly pertaining to team activities such as communication and collaboration.

	Continuous assessment	Partial exams	General exam
Written individual exam (traditional/online)			x
Group assignment (report, exercise, presentation, project work etc.)			x
Peer evaluation			x

The status of attending is assigned to students who participate to the group project. 

The status is valid for the first three exam sessions. 

  

Attending students 

  

Grades will be computed as follows: 

1. Group Activities - 50% of the total grade (15 points)

2. Written Final examination: 50% of the total grade (16 points)

  

  

1.  Examination 

The written final examination will be closed-book, short answer and/or multiple-choice, in class exam. 

The written exam includes questions referring to cases, talks and related concepts, models and tools presented and discussed in class. It assesses students’ ability to apply the theory and methods learned in the course. 

  

2.  Group Activities 

The group activities provide an opportunity to apply course concepts and to perform an in-depth analysis of strategy issues that are of interest to you. You may do this in a team (up to 6-7 people) according the guidelines distributed in class. 

  

The marks obtained on activities remain valid for the first three exam sessions, only. Students who take the exam in later dates will be treated as non-attendants. 

  

The activities and the individual written exam are respectively evaluated on a 0-15 scale and 0-16 scale. The marks of the field projects and the individual written exam are summed up. To pass the exam, students must obtain a minimum score of 9 at the written exam and an overall mark of at least 18. An insufficient final mark (i.e., lower than 18) implies the repetition of the exam at the same conditions of non-attending students. 

There is no oral integration. 

Written exam based on the textbooks - 100%. 

The questions are aimed at verifying the ability to apply the knowledge students learned when studying the teaching material.  

Instructors'notes. 

 

Selection of readings (TBD)

Textbook Digital Business and E-Commerce Management.

Dave Chaffey, Tanya Hemphill, David Edmundson-Bird.

Pearson Education Limited, 2019