Business Model Framework to Analyse the Impact

¶ … Business Model Framework to Analyse the Impact of eBusiness on an Existing Business by Susan Lambert. This was published at the Collecter Conference 2007, held December 9-11th in Australia. The article attempts to "demonstrate that a business model framework that affords primacy of concept to the value proposition and that follows the rules of the object-oriented paradigm can be useful in evaluating e-business initiatives." The wording of this objective obfuscates the nature of the study, which appears to be that the use of models can help to understand why e-business initiatives succeed or failure in established companies. The author wastes considerable space on superfluous information, such as three pages defining "primacy of concept," and this further obfuscates the findings of the work. The author's conceptual background is then applied not to a study but to a singular anecdote.

The author's base question revolves around finding ways to determine the success of an e-business initiative. Yet, this question is not answered. A better article would have identified metrics -- market share, revenue, profit or even cannibalization metrics -- and tested them for effectiveness. The author instead concludes -- without evidence -- that the null hypothesis is correct and that a business model framework can be used to analyze the impact of an e-business initiative on each aspect of the firm's original business model. This conclusion may be valid, but it has not been empirically tested by the author. The result is not genuine insight, but a theoretical discussion leading to an a priori conclusion.

I do not find the article to be significant, in part because there is no study. In addition, the author fails to break new ground -- there are any number of models and frameworks that can be used to judge the success of an e-business venture. There are any number of existing metrics as well. Ultimately, for the practitioner there is nothing new of value in this article. For the academic, perhaps, but even that is unlikely. Indeed, the author's conclusions only note the changes to the business that occur, not the results of those changes. The output of the tactic the author suggests, therefore, is little more than the result of formalized brainstorming. That the author chooses to cloak this in dense swathes of academic jargon appears to be an attempt to mask the lack of substance in this paper.

The paper Cultural Differences in the Adoption of Electronic Commerce: A Comparison of Japan and the United States by Kimery and Amirkhalkhali appeared as part of the EABR & TLC Conference Proceedings in Rothenburg, Germany in 2008. The article seeks to investigate whether national culture plays a role "in coloring consumers' intentions to adopt electronic commerce." The two nations being studied are the United States and Japan, a good choice because while the two are at a similar stage of economic development and technological diffusion, they are vastly different in terms of culture. The paper utilizes the diffusion of innovation theory to help in modeling this study. The authors rely on Hofstede's cultural dimensions for their examination of the differences between the two cultures. The null hypotheses are that there are going to be cultural differences that impact on the adoption of electronic commerce by consumers and that these can be used to predict adoption in countries around the world. There are nine propositions in total.

The authors raise a number of key issues in their nine propositions. They test a variety of different cultural traits, and draw linkages between these and the factors that underlie the adoption of electronic commerce. This allows the researchers to understand where conclusions can be drawn and where they cannot be drawn. The authors find tentative support for some of their conclusions as the result of their survey and the regression analysis conducted on the results. The authors note that there is some basis for future study of some of the variables that appear to have an impact on electronic commerce adoption by consumers.

This study is valuable for both practitioners and academics. If these findings receive follow-up studies, firms can use the information to predict how consumers in different countries will react to electronic commerce initiatives. Academics are given an opportunity to design further studies to test elements of this topic. Furthermore, the topic is current, so the topic has strong relevance for businesses today. The study even identified some key factors that are critical to electronic commerce adoption, such as uncertainty avoidance and the trustworthiness of the company and technology involved.