With the promises of e-commerce come problems and opportunities for researchers and practitioners. One of these opportunities is taking a design science approach to e-commerce research. The argument is made that design science contributes to the theory in business school research. Contributions of design science to the research and practice of e-commerce are categorized into artifacts that aid e-commerce practitioners, artifacts that aid e-commerce researchers, and theories related to these artifacts. However, the design science approach introduces limitations such as the perishability of design science artifacts, and the time it takes to develop an artifact to the point where it is useful for practice
