In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advantage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interorganizational competitive advantage: (1) relation-specific assets, (2) knowledge-sharing routines, (3) complementary resources/capabilities, and (4) effective governance. We examine each of these potential sources of rent in detail, identifying key subprocesses, and also discuss the isolating mechanisms that serve to preserve relational rents. Finally, we discuss how the relational view may offer normative prescriptions for firm-level strategies that contradict the prescriptions offered by those with a resource-based view or industry structure view.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259056.pdf

The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

In this study, we consider the online consumer as both a shopper and a computer user. We test constructs from information systems (Technology Acceptance Model), marketing (Consumer Behavior), and psychology (Flow and Environmental Psychology) in an integrated theoretical framework of online consumer behavior. Specifically, we examine how emotional and cognitive responses to visiting a Web-based store for the first time can influence online consumers' intention to return and their likelihood to make unplanned purchases. The instrumentation shows reasonably good measurement properties and the constructs are validated as a nomological network.A questionnaire-based empirical study is used to test this nomological network. Results confirm the double identity of the online consumer as a shopper and a computer user because both shopping enjoyment and perceived usefulness of the site strongly predict intention to return. Our results on unplanned purchases are not conclusive. We also test some individual and Web site factors that can affect the consumer's emotional and cognitive responses. Product involvement, Web skills, challenges, and use of value-added search mechanisms all have a significant impact on the Web consumer. The study provides a more rounded, albeit partial, view of the online consumer and is a significant steptowards a better understanding of consumer behavior on the Web. The validated metrics should be of use to researchers and practitioners alike.

/pdf/applying-the-technology-acceptance-model-and-flow-theory-to-4umxbzanjd.pdf

Applying the Technology Acceptance Model and Flow Theory to Online Consumer Behavior

Hedonic and utilitarian motivations for online retail shopping behavior

https://ira.lib.polyu.edu.hk/bitstream/10397/527/1/20%20year%20on%20and%2010%20years%20after%20the%20Internet.pdf

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet - the state of eTourism research.

Information systems can serve as intermediaries between the buyers and the sellers in a market creating an "electronic marketplace" that lowers the buyers' cost to acquire information about seller prices and product offerings. As a result, electronic marketplaces reduce the inefficiencies caused by buyer search costs, in the process reducing the ability of sellers to extract monopolistic profits while increasing the ability of markets to optimally allocate productive resources. This article models the role of buyer search costs in markets with differentiated product offerings. The impact of reducing these search costs is analyzed in the context of an electronic marketplace, and the allocational efficiencies such a reduction can bring to a differentiated market are formalized. The resulting implications for the incentives of buyers, sellers, and independent intermediaries to invest in electronic marketplaces are explored. Finally, the possibility to separate price information from product attribute information is introduced, and the implications of designing markets promoting competition along each of these dimensions are discussed.

http://people.stern.nyu.edu/bakos/emkts.pdf

Reducing buyer search costs: implications for electronic marketplaces

Buyers are transforming their relationships with suppliers. For example, instead of playing off dozens or even hundreds of competing suppliers against one another, many firms are finding it more profitable to work closely with only a small number of "partners." In this paper we explore some causes and consequences of this transformation. We apply the economic theory of incomplete contracts to determine the optimal strategy for a buyer. We find that the buyer firm will often maximize profits by limiting its options and reducing its own bargaining power. This may seem paradoxical in an age of cheap communications costs and aggressive competition. However, unlike earlier models that focused on coordination costs, we focus on the critical importance of providing incentives for suppliers. Our results spring from the need to make it worthwhile for suppliers to invest in "noncontractibles" such as innovation, responsiveness, and information sharing. Such incentives will often be stronger when the number of competing suppliers is small. The findings of the theoretical models appear to be consistent with observations from empirical research which highlight the key role of information technology in enabling this transformation.

Information technology, incentives, and the optimal number of suppliers

Interorganizational information systems--i.e., systems spanning more than a single organization--are proliferating as companies become aware of the potential of these systems to affect interorganizational interactions in terms of economic efficiency and strategic conduct. This new technology can have a far-reaching impact on the structure of entire industries. This article identifies two types of interorganizational information systems: information links and electronic markets. It then explores how economic models can be employed to study the implications of information links for the coordination of individual organizations with their customers and their suppliers, and the implications of electronic market systems for efficiency and competition in vertical markets. Finally, the strategic significance of inter-organizational systems is addressed, and certain potential long-term impacts on the structure of markets, industries, and organizations are discussed.

Information links and electronic marketplaces: the role of interorganizational information systems in vertical markets

As search costs and other coordination costs decline, theory predicts that firms should optimally increase the number of suppliers with which they do business. Despite recent declines in these costs due to information technology, there is little evidence of an increase in the number of suppliers used. On the contrary, in many industries, firms are working with fewer suppliers. This suggests that other forces must be accounted for in a more complete model of buyer‐supplier relationships. This article uses the theory of incomplete contracts to illustrate that incentive considerations can motivate a buyer to limit the number of employed suppliers. To induce suppliers to make investments that cannot be specified and enforced in a satisfactory manner via a contractual mechanism, the buyer must commit not to expropriate the ex post surplus from such investments. Under reasonable bargaining mechanisms, such a commitment will be more credible if the buyer can choose from fewer alternative suppliers. Information t...

From vendors to partners: Information technology and incomplete contracts in buyer‐supplier relationships

Academicians and practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in the economics of Information Technology (IT). In part, this interest stems from the increased role that IT now plays in the strategic thinking of most large organizations, and from the significant dollar costs expended by these organizations on IT. Naturally enough, researchers are turning to economics as a reference discipline in their attempt to answer questions concerning both the value added by IT and the true cost of providing IT resources. This increased interest in the economics of IT is manifested in the application of a number of aspects of economic theory in recent information systems research, leading to results that have appeared in a wide variety of publication outlets This article reviews this work and provides a systematic categorization as a first step in establishing a common research tradition, and to serve as an introduction for researchers beginning work in this area. Six areas of economic theory are represented: Information economics, production economics, economic models of organizational performance, industrial organization, institutional economics (agency theory and transaction cost theory), and macroeconomic studies of IT impact. For each of these areas, recent work is reviewed and suggestions for future research are provided.

https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~bakos/econ&itres.pdf

J. Yannis Bakos

Papers

Reducing buyer search costs: implications for electronic marketplaces

Information technology, incentives, and the optimal number of suppliers

Information links and electronic marketplaces: the role of interorganizational information systems in vertical markets

From vendors to partners: Information technology and incomplete contracts in buyer‐supplier relationships

Recent applications of economic theory in Information Technology research