Toward Virtual Business

Abstract

The Internet has provided traditional retailers a new mean with which to serve customers and today there are two main trends of organizations which flow concurrently. On one hand there is the Traditional Organization, established in between 20th century and on the other is Modern Organization emerged in this ongoing century. Many traditional organizations “bricks-andmortar” have transformed to modern organizations “clicks-and-mortar” by incorporating Internet sales. There are huge differences between these two types. On the other hand the appearance of virtual firms raises the question of what kind of changes they have brought to the analysis of a particular industry and in the choice of a strategy for those particular firms and other firms that have to compete with them. The aim of this paper is to explain shortly through a literature review what the brickand- mortar, click-and-mortar and virtual organizations mean and analyzing with three specific examples how does it changes between them the organization structure, the definition of core functions and the degree of outsourcing, use of power and types of bargaining in dealing with suppliers and customers, and key management functions. In the future we believe that this paper will serve as a base for future research in the area.