Document Type

Article

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) has been widely applied to business operations and service systems and derived various innovative business models and novel areas, especially e-business. E-business provides service by websites via IT with online information or systems to create multiple innovative values which change user behavior. Under this trend, e-business (hereinafter referred to as native e-business firms) has deeply threatened the survival of traditional service firms. To overcome difficulties, many traditional firms select bottom-up integration to increase e-services (hereinafter referred to as tradition-to-e-business firms) for expanding their multiple marketing channels. To face the challenge, native e-business firms, on the other hand, choose top-down integration, including physical stores, logistics, cash flow, supply chain, etc., to increase service values. Under competition in many years, the tradition-to-e-business firms are hard to surpass native e-business firms. On the contrary, native e-business firms cannot defeat traditional firms also.

In this study, we explore the reason why native e-business and traditional firms cannot supersede each other. We find that the nature of firms and development strategy influences business focus, growth trajectory and advantage position. In the emerging stage, “e-business” is core business in native e-business firms. The firms are led by entrepreneur insights and their IT capabilities. Traditional firms were forced to build e-business, when they perceived customer disappearance. E-business is just one of their marketing channels. In the growth stage, e-Business and complementary assets oppositely lead enterprise resource integration, and the capability of which affects the company's competitive advantage.

This article adopts qualitative research methods to investigate innovative capability, IT competence and complementary assets which derive the impact of e-business value creation on firms with different origins and background. Then we interpret the phenomenon of change by resource-based view (RBV) and structure inertia theory, analyze the advantages and limitation of native e-business firms and traditional service firms, and explain why it is difficult to surpass and hard to be defeated by each other. Finally, we proposed theory contribution and management implication.

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