Designing Systems for Internet Commerce, Second Edition

Chapter 2. The Commerce Value Chain

	He chose to include the things         That in each other are included, the whole,         The complicate, the amassing harmony.
	--Wallace Stevens[1]

Introducing the Commerce Value Chain

When a consumer buys a manufactured item in a store, it is merely one step in a complex process that began with the raw materials used in creating the item. At each step in that process, something of value was added. That value might have been refining the raw materials, molding them into a useful shape, transporting them for further processing, or selling the item to the final consumer. We sometimes refer to this as the value chain for a product—the chain of adding value in creating and delivering a product.

Even though ...