Internet-Based Electronic Commerce and Changing Industrial and Corporate Structures: The Case of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing

摘要

This Ph.D study, which has been possible thanks to the financialsupport of the Institute of Social Sciences at RoskildeUniversity, gives some insight into the new field of Internetbasedconsumer oriented electronic commerce and how it canaffect industry structures and transform value chains. Consumerorientedelectronic commerce is seen as a specific type ofinformation and communication technology (ICT) innovation,since it has been possible only after the advent of the WorldWide Web (WWW) in the spring of 1993. This type of ecommerceis still at the beginning of the life cycle, andconsumer spending on the Internet is still limited, but it isforecasted to boom in the near future especially in the context ofthe development of the information society. The thesis tries togive an answer to the following questions:1. What is the impact of Internet-based electronic commerce onthe industry structure of Scientific, Technical and Medical(STM) publishing with focus on intermediation anddisintermediation?2. How is electronic commerce transforming from themarketplace to the marketspace the corporate value chainsand the corresponding business processes of the Scientific,Technical and Medical (STM) publishing industry?3. How can the business value of electronic commerce to acorporation be optimized either in profitability orcompetitive advantage terms?This thesis gives an overview of consumer based electroniccommerce, what is its business value to the corporations, andhow it can impact industrial structures and corporate valuechains, thus setting the basis for more focused studies to beconducted as future research. The empirical material, usedmainly in a descriptive/predictive way, is based on theScientific, Technical and Medical (STM) publishing industry.Examples from other industries are also occasionally used tobetter clarify the concepts.The main contribution of the thesis is the attempt to understandthe implications of electronic commerce to the Scientific,Technical and Medical Publishing industry. More specifically,the main contribution of the thesis is represented by thefollowing: the development of a business value complementaritymodel of electronic commerce; the impact of electroniccommerce on the value chain of publishing, including a detailedanalysis of the business processes of publishing in themarketspace; and finally the analysis of the potential impact ofInternet-based electronic commerce on the industry structure ofScientific, Technical and Medical publishing. This thesis is anelaboration and more complete presentation of the content andbackground material of three articles that can be seen as a spinoff of the project.The first article, “The Impact of Electronic Commerce on thePublishing Industry: Towards a Business Value Model ofElectronic Publishing”, has been published in the March 1999Issue of the Journal of Information Science. The article derivesthe specific business processes corresponding to the on-lineactivities of the value chain, namely on-line production, on-linedistribution, on-line marketing, on-line sales and on-linecustomer support and shows how they are transformed on themarketspace. Moreover, the article argues thatcomplementarities between the different activities of the on-linevalue chain, the on-line business processes and the supportingtechnologies should be explored when a company wants to enterthe field of electronic commerce.The second article, “Electronic Commerce in Scientific,Technical and Medical (STM) Publishing: An Industry Analysiswith Focus on Intermediation and Disintermediation”, has beenpublished in the Proceedings of the IRIS 22 Conference, Turku,Finland, 7-10 August 1999, and it is under review in aninternational journal. The article analyzes how the advent of theWorld Wide Web (WWW) is changing the structure of theScientific, Technical and Medical (STM) publishing industry. Itis argued that this is due to many reasons, among which are: a)the introduction of new substitute products for the paper versionof the journal, for example the electronic journal, on-lineservices and e-mail lists; b) the arrival of new entrants into theindustry as for example universities starting publishing theelectronic versions of the journals themselves; c) the newelectronic intermediaries, that could lead to disintermediationespecially of the physical distributors, printers and binders. Thearticle concludes that some intermediaries of the marketplace,for example the sales agents, are starting re-engineering forelectronic commerce, as a result of the potential threat from theelectronic-only intermediaries, thus operating both in themarketplace and in the marketspace.The third article, “What is the Business Value of ElectronicCommerce? How can it be optimized?” has been presented atthe MICT (Management of Information and CommunicationTechnology) conference, Copenhagen, 14-17 September 1999,forthcoming in an international anthology entitled “e-commerceand Intelligent Management”, S. Junghagen, K. Friedman, J.Olaisen (Eds.). This article presents a business valuecomplementarity model of electronic commerce, which is ageneralization of the model developed in article 1. This model isbased on the value chain analysis and the business valuecomplementarity theory. It can be used as a methodology forstrategy formulation in the adoption process of electroniccommerce in a corporation. The main idea of this model is that itis important to explore complementarities between differentactivities of the value chain, the corresponding businessprocesses and the supporting technologies when re-engineeringfor on-line commerce. The exploration of thesecomplementarities should lead to a “better” strategyformulation, to the maximization of the business value ofelectronic commerce to the corporation and to a “better” systemdesign.To conclude, I think that this thesis is only a small buildingblock towards the understanding of consumer-oriented Internetbasedelectronic commerce as a technological innovationspreading into the social system, and its implications forindustries and corporations. Further research should beconducted to study for example the implications of consumerorientedelectronic commerce for other industries producingdigital products and for service industries. Interesting items forfurther research could also be in depth-case studies ofcorporations that have re-engineered some or, in the future, allthe business processes for on-line commerce.