LiveWorld Transcripts

NetLibrary presents

Anita Rosen
Author of the book, "The e-Commerce Question and Answer Book"

February 29, 2000

Anita Rosen, author of the book "The e-Commerce Question and Answer Book" chats in the first netLibrary "Talking Business" series, featuring a number of prominent authors discussing the hottest business topics; including e-commerce, customer service, and the Internet.

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NetLibrary: netLibrary is pleased to welcome you to an interactive discussion with Anita Rosen, author of "The e-Commerce Question and Answer Book." The chat with Anita Rosen is the first in the netLibrary Talking Business series, featuring a number of prominent authors discussing the hottest business topics; including e-commerce, customer service, and the Internet. Tonight, Anita Rosen will discuss e-commerce from her perspective as a business consultant and author. And now, without further ado, please welcome Anita Rosen!

Anita Rosen: Well, thank you. What's the first question that we have?

Billie: How did you get started as an e-commerce consultant?

Anita Rosen: Well, I started off as a marketing consultant, my specialty is launching products. I've probably launched about 40 products in my career. And four years ago I was hired by Digital to launch Alta Vista. And then I was hired by Netscape to launch Sweetspot, which is their server product line. What I really was doing - we didn't call it e-commerce three, four years ago - but I was working with companies at that time, translating traditional product marketing into the internet. So, I didn't start out being an e-commerce specialist, but those were the products I was working on at the very early stages of the internet.

Roybal: Anita, how are the more traditional marketing strategies being translated into e-commerce?

Anita Rosen: I would say that I find that about 80 percent of what traditionally people do for marketing is the same on the internet. The difference then becomes having to translate what works well over the internet. You need to modify what you currently do for a new media.

Fintan: How do US companies compare with other international companies in their e-commerce development?

Anita Rosen: Oh, I've been doing a lot of work around the world. I would say the US is easily two years ahead. I was in Asia and I was in Europe in the last four months and they haven't even started thinking about the issues the Americans are thinking about. The other big difference between the rest of the world and North America is internet access. In the rest of the world people pay per minute for telephone access, so consumers are very careful when they get on the internet with their time. Because of that, there's not as much reach into the general population that the internet has in the US.

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