The work carried out by the e-commerce managers has implications internally, in terms of the organising of the firm, and externally, in regard to how the company is perceived by its customers and how the organisations manage to stay relevant and profitable in today’s fiercely competitive markets. Thus, the project has the potential to create valuable knowledge for practitioners and generate both public and academic interest.

However, while the topic of e-commerce or e-tailing has received much scholarly attention, we know surprisingly little about e-commerce managers and their work. Although e-commerce managers are often considered stakeholders and intended recipients of the research insights produced in studies of e-commerce, few scholars have examined the work of these new market actors. This in turn mirrors a broader situation in marketing research where the organizational practices involved in marketing work have received relatively little attention. There is thus a need to understand the day-to-day operations of e-commerce managers. We must understand what goes into and shapes the practices of these marketing professionals.

To this end, this project takes a practice theory approach and empirically explores and conceptualizes the work performed by e-commerce managers. The aim is to map out the set of practices that form the work of e-commerce managers while also exploring the understandings underpinning these practices and the competence needed to perform them. By doing this we hope to understand how these new actors take shape and in what ways they produce business value.