Director's Message

Welcome to MeRC’s website! Our centre brings together the disciplines of Business, Engineering, Health and Humanities to focus on eBusiness issues in both industry and academia. Within this site you will find information on a broad spectrum of topics such as B2B and B2C eCommerce, mobile commerce, eHealth, online privacy, identity theft and much more.

I invite you to attend our seminars, conferences, and other events and to learn more about our research, education and outreach activities. If you have any questions or comments about MeRC please don't hesitate to contact us.

The Importance of eBusiness

Companies of all sizes are considering the creative use of electronic business (eBusiness) to find new markets, improve market share, and reduce costs or to satisfy the requirements of their business partners. eBusiness is a general concept covering those forms of business transactions or information ex-change that are executed using digital information communication technology, between companies (B2B), between companies and consumers (B2C), between companies and public administrations, or between consumers (C2C). In many cases eBusiness is necessary for firms to prosper and even to survive in the emerging global marketplace.

We believe that the “e” in eBusiness will eventually disappear, as it becomes the normal way of doing business.  We are focused on business innovation in the networked economy.  Significant resources committed to research and education are required to increase the competitiveness of Canadian businesses in this dynamic environment, through increased understanding of the effect of eBusiness on business operations and how to use the related technologies to their best advantage.  Individual organizations, and the Canadian economy as a whole, can benefit through access to these research results and related educational activities. 

At McMaster University we have an interdisciplinary team of researchers who can respond to these challenges. The potential of this team is focused through the McMaster eBusiness Research Centre (MeRC).  We invite business partners to join us in this endeavour, and receive the benefits of working with a world-class electronic business research centre.

MeRC research groups have developed expertise in areas of mobile commerce, eHealth, portals, identity theft, online negotiation, supply chain management, interface design, online trust and privacy, eLearning, knowledge management, and change management, among others.

I invite you to browse this website for details about MeRC researchers and the growing list of their publications, presentations and working papers.

Dr. Khaled Hassanein, Director of MeRC