ABSTRACT

Recent management literature is littered with unfulfilled predictions and inaccurate assessments of how electronic commerce will alter distribution channels. The following article adds clarity to our understanding of the role of e-commerce in restructuring channels by examining a variety of scenarios where collapse, shift, and expansion of channels has occurred. Classical and new theory is used to interpret weak, failed, and successful models employed by a wide variety of established firms and e-commerce startups. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright © 1997 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page or initial screen of the document. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept., ACM Inc.

Interview with John M. Gallaugher on Information systems: A manager's guide to harnessing technology, by John Gallaugher

This book is a free online Management Information Systems textbook that teaches students how he or she will experience IS from a manager's perspective first hand through chapters that include both text and bleeding-edge cases. Concepts introduced are supplemented with interesting cases on firms from many industries which help to immediately engage students and provide them with real world examples such as Netflix, Zara's, Google and more. Published by Flat World Knowledge, the book is intended for undergraduate and/or graduate courses in Management Information Systems and Information Technology. Though available free online it can also be purchased in print.Title supplied by cataloger

Understanding Network Effects in Software Markets: Evidence from Web Server Pricing

Prior theoretical research has established that many software products are subject to network effects and exhibit the characteristics of two-sided markets. However, despite the importance of the software industry to the world economy, few studies have attempted to empirically examine these characteristics, or several others which theory suggests impact software price. This study develops and tests a research-grounded model of two-sided software markets that accounts for several key factors influencing software pricing, including network externalities, cross-market complementarities, standards, mindshare, and trialability. Applying the model to the context of the market for Web server software, several key findings are offered. First, a positive market share to price relationship is identified, offering support for the network externalities hypothesis even though the market examined is based on open standards. Second, the results suggest that the market under study behaves as a two-sided market in that firms able to capture market share for one product enjoy benefits in terms of both market share and price for the complement. Third, the positive price benefits of securing consumer mindshare, of supporting dominant standards, and from offering a trial product are demonstrated. Last, a negative price shock is also identified in the period after a well-known, free-pricing rival has entered the market. Nonetheless, network effects continued to remain significant during the period. These findings enhance our understanding of software markets, offer new techniques for examining such markets, and suggest the wisdom of allocating resources to develop advantages in the factors studied