For this technology to be effective, however, customers must enjoy using the Internet to shop and perform other functions. The Internet is still viewed by many consumers with a certain degree of scepticism, since so much content on the Internet is of questionable origin or value. One of the main challenges to companies proposing to market on the Internet is to avoid the garbage and clutter that so often appears online and attempt to conduct a marketing campaign online without hype. Many Internet entrepreneurs are banking on the emergence of electronic markets in industrial supply chains. However, established supply chains and networks do not often act as pure markets, and include significant structural strategic alliances between long standing business partners.
Investors view ecommerce as a completely new paradigm in business.
Business models for ecommerce companies rewrite the basic rules of how business is conducted. Ecommerce capital is also patient, waiting for months, and sometimes years, before requiring profitability in their investments. Among the stated aims of many business plans which attract such capital are to give away value and services to consumers in order to gain market share. In the new economy, consumer attention and awareness of online brands are priced and valued as highly as productive capital such as factories were in the old economy. So central is the notion of the customer to the new economy, that many new companies attempt to create completely electronic interfaces with them.