Relation between transaction costs and electronic commerce: An application in automotive industry

Developments in information technologies and electronic commerce which is a fact started to be argued after being widely used especially in the business world on the Internet have brought many advantages for firms. Electronic commerce has caused chances for firms to act more independently regardless of time and place restrictions, reductions of the market entry barriers, obtaining goods and services in a much cheaper way and significant decreases in costs. Furthermore one of the advantages with which electronic commerce provides firms appears in the field of transaction costs. In my study which I am presenting as a thesis of master's degree, the relation between transaction costs and electronic commerce applications among firms has been looked into.Firms face several costs which are different from production costs as a result of the mutual purchasing transactions. Costs involved exist in the process of searching the firms and their product specialities, bargaining with the potential firms, deciding to work with the most appropriate firm, having a negotiation with the firm which has been decided on, enforcing and monitoring of the policy which has been agreed.The degree of transferring the commercial transactions to the electronic media is reflected to the strategical decision processes of the firms by affecting each sub-dimension which constitutes transaction costs in different ways.A survey has been applied to several authorized dealers in the automotive industry in the center of Antalya related to the subject. At this point 40 executives working in different managerial levels in 17 enterprises have been asked about the ?the relation between transaction costs and electronic commerce?. The data obtained have been evaluated in the SPSS 10.0 media. Correlation and multiple regression analysis techniques are used in the evaluation of the data.