FROM PLACE TO SPACE: Migrating to Profitable Electronic Commerce Business Models

Abstract

The Internet is a powerful channel that presents new opportunities for touching customers, enriching products and services with information, squeezing out costs through process automation, and redesigning internal business processes through enhanced communication and knowledge sharing. In most firms e-business processes are changing the nature of the buyerseller relationship, the role of information technology (IT), and the design of organizational structures and roles. As firms attempt to capitalize on their existing capabilities through the Internet, they necessarily disrupt their embedded processes. This process of leveraging strengths and disrupting habits underlies the migration to e-business?a migration from market place to market space. This report describes that migration using cross-case analysis of nine firms' ebusiness efforts.