E-Fulfilment and Offshore Centres

This chapter introduces the importance of the e-fulfilment industry for offshore centres and in particular the small business and economic policy implications. The extant concepts, research, and experiences the chapter builds on is the literature concerning the e-fulfilment industry. It argues that the key results, evidence, and experience, from the models that have been developed and the specific model formulated for this work, indicate reasons for the development of e-fulfilment in offshore centres with particular reference to the tax advantages provided by the Channel Island of Jersey. The limitations of the results are that they report the early findings of other work and the conceptualisation of the e-fulfilment model in this work and as a result there is a need for empirical evidence. The authors therefore plan to undertake empirical research to support the evidence that has been researched so far. Furthermore, there are important implications of the study for policy makers, small business, practitioners, researchers, and educators for the specific field of e-fulfilment developments in particular and e-commerce in general.