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School Working Papers - Series 2002

Electronic Commerce (eCommerce) academic programs are the fundamental tools for developing eCommerce professionals for society. When the question “Is E-Commerce dead, past its prime, or just resting?” is under discussion, it is useful to see what universities are doing in terms of providing eCommerce education. Our long-term study of universities in the Asia-Pacific region found that degree programs tended to use the terms Electronic Commerce and eCommerce for their masters degrees from the early-tomid 1990s. New degrees offered towards the end of the 1990s, by contrast, tended to use the names eBusiness and Internet Marketing. As the initial surge of interest in commercial eCommerce activities falls away, following the slump in the NASDAQ index, are eCommerce degree programs also likely to be so negatively affected? A number of educators in the United States, for example, believe that eCommerce academic programs will no longer be being offered within a few years. In this paper, which focuses on the apparent counter-trend in Hong Kong-based eCommerce educational programs, we examine: (i) why eCommerce degree programs suddenly emerged in Hong Kong SAR; and (ii) how long eCommerce programs will last in Hong Kong.