Electronic commerce: creating competitive opportunities in Brazilian supermarkets

The aim of this paper, focusing the supermarket sector in Brazil, is studying electronic commerce use, trying to identify the motivations for its adoption, its difficulties in implementation and its capacity for finding and keeping enterprises competitive advantages in service automation and business dealing. The methodology used is based on bibliography research through Brazilian and foreign magazines, Internet and on case studies done by the authors' investigation group. Case studies information was obtained through interviews and visits involving since main executives to operational level employees.