Hans-Dieter Zimmermann

Understanding the Digital Economy: Challenges for New Business Models

The developments of the digital economy will have an elementary impact on economic systems and how economic values will be created. The paper therefore discusses four basic characteristics of the digital economy. Understanding the emerging developments in this context form the foundation of the definition of new and appropriate business models.

Management of customer relationship in business media-the case of the financial industry

The development of the digital economy will have a fundamental impact on the structures and processes of economic systems. The paper therefore begins with outlining the general challenges arising in the context of the digital economy. It focuses on the relationship between suppliers and customers in the described context. After a more detailed explanation of this, it analyzes the challenges for the financial industry arising from the general development of the digital economy. After that it develops the outline of a new approach to the management of customer relationships focusing mainly on the building blocks. It provides examples of applying these building blocks to the financial industry.

Strategic Partnerships and Competitiveness of Business-to-Business E-Marketplaces: Preliminary Evidence from Europe

Business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces offer the potential of substantial increases in efficiency and transparency in their target industries. We argue that to realize this potential they must form strategic partnerships. While the need to partner with companies in their target industries has been coming to the forefront with the rise of industry-sponsored marketplaces, firms find that there is a further need to partner with other organizations to create more extensive and adaptive service offerings. The goal of this research is to support the view that forming strategic partnerships with specialized service providers and other marketplaces is an important means for marketplaces to create successful business models and to improve their competitive position. We examine the relevant theory and explore the status of partnering activities of European B2B marketplaces, which we surveyed from April to May 2001. Additionally, we report on a set of in-depth interviews with the management of a number of major B2B marketplaces. The results support our view that partnering skills are critical for B2B marketplaces to improve their competitive position.

Management of Customer Relationship in Business Media (MCR-BM)

he developments of the Digital Economy will have a fundamental impact on the structures and processes of economic systems. Within this new economy the importance of the creation and maintenance of a relationship between a customer and a supplier is increasing, but the way to handle this relationship is changing. Therefore, we focus on the upcoming challenges to relationships between suppliers and customers. Viewing this focus in more detail we will develop the outline of a new, holistic approach to the management of customer relationship in Business Media. In order to manage the relationship between suppliers and customers in a successful way, a model for the Management of Customer Relationship will be presented. This model includes several building blocks, which should be considered when designing and maintaining the relationship in an online environment. This model should, therefore, serve as a framework to combine the various instruments of the Management of Customer Relationship.

Editorial 24/3: Electronic Markets and general research

Dear readers of Electronic Markets, We are happy to present you the third issue of volume 24 which includes five papers that were submitted to the general research section of Electronic Markets. As described in the editorial section of the last issue (Alt and Osterle 2014a, b) general research papers are a key element of the research paper section and currently account for slightly more than half of all submissions (as per end 2013). With a similar acceptance rate to special issue papers (approx. 11 %), it is not surprising that Electronic Markets also sees two general research issues within one volume. After the first issue in 2014, the current third issue represents the second in volume 24. We wish to use this opportunity to describe the variety of topics relevant to Electronic Markets (EM 2014) in more detail. In the first place, the spectrum of topics is related to the development of electronic commerce itself. When the journal was launched back in 1991, electronic markets were limited to exchanging a high volume of electronic business documents between application systems (EDI), to proprietary electronic exchanges in the financial sector, computerized reservation systems in the airline industry as well as to videotex-based early electronic shopping systems. Although electronic markets were attributed a significant potential (Malone et al. 1987, Osterle and Schmid 2008), the performance and diffusion of key technologies were still in their infancy. In particular, the Internet since the late 1980s has pushed electronic commerce and electronic markets towards a broader area range of applications. From the retrospective various stages of development may be observed which not only spurred a wealth of (business and technological) innovations, but also contributed additional research topics and questions. For example, in their compelling review of research on electronic commerce since 1988, Clarke and Pucihar (2013) have repeatedly indicated that the topics of Electronic Markets evolved in tandem with those published at the Bled eCommerce Conference. They identified three phases of evolution: the EDI era between 1988 and 1995, the eBusiness era between 1996 and 2004, and the eInteraction era since 2005. Others described the evolution in five stages (e.g. Tassabehji (2003) based on Earl (2000)) or more informal in multiple periods (e.g. Turban et al. 2006). Table 1 builds on the existing models and presents an updated view on the evolution phases and emphasizes that electronic markets have actually penetrated all aspects of modern economies. In the beginning proprietary technologies and solutions existed that were limited to specific application areas and primarily large organizations. The Internet was a key enabler in the early e-commerce era since it provided access to information independent of the underlying technological platform and interconnectivity across various providers. Static presences on the Internet appeared, but soon became more interactive and dynamic in the early e-business era. During this period many new businesses as well as exceeded expectations on the role of electronic markets emerged. However, the burst of the e-commerce bubble in the early 2000s showed that electronic commerce did not become obsolete, but shed light on linking the early e-business developments with the entire business operations and the subsequent potential to shape digital value chains. Following this idea a variety of important technologies spread, in particular, mobile devices, social media and virtualization technologies. The early digital ecosystems showed that electronic markets are now at the heart of business models in many industries (e.g. Alt and Klein 2011, 45) and with more convergence on the way they will contribute to the transformation of entire industries. For example, digital ecosystems providers, R. Alt (*) Information Systems Institute, University of Leipzig, Grimmaische Str. 12, 04109 Leipzig, Germany e-mail: rainer.alt@uni-leipzig.de

Grundlegende Konzepte einer Electronic Mall

Auf dem Weg in die Informationsgesellschaft werden die Beziehungen zwischen Wirtschaftssubjekten zunehmend von der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik beeinflusst und getrieben. Das Thema des elektronischen Handels in elektronischen Markten ist hochaktuell. Die Etablierung elektronischer Marktplatze im kommerziellen Bereich schreitet zugig voran, entsprechende Infrastrukturen bestehen bereits und werden weiter ausgebaut. Der elektronische Austausch von Geschaftsdokumenten mittels EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) ist fur viele Unternehmen bereits eine Selbstverstandlichkeit und findet zunehmende Verbreitung.

The Design of Future Telematic Systems for Private Customers

customer, we find that many of these systems treat the household in the traditional way as a consumer at the end of the value chain. Systems like telebankingor teleshopping systems are often only the extension of the ‘electronic workbench’ into the household. The consumer carries out tasks, such as the data entry for electronic payment transactions. Our societies are faced with a phenomenon called ‘information age’. Among other things, this means important and The Design of Future Telematic Systems for Private Customers

Editorial 24/4: Electronic markets and business models

Dear readers of Electronic Markets, Almost 15 years have passed since Electronic Markets published the first special issue on business models in 2001. This was a time where business strategists had difficulties in systematically explaining the essence, logic and ingredients of business models. Compared to the long-term timing that was prevalent in traditional thinking on business strategies, Internet thinkers and practitioners brought a new concept more or less overnight into the business world and caught many strategists by surprise. This does not mean that the new termwas always used precisely and with sufficient “meat”. As described by Magretta (2002, p.86), business models were “one of the great buzzwords of the Internet boom, routinely invoked, [...] to glorify all manner of half-baked plans”. Business model definitions emerged in the late 1990s and we are proud that one of the earliest definitions available was published by Paul Timmers from the European Commission in volume 8 of ElectronicMarkets. He conceived a business model as “an architecture for the product, service and information flows, including a description of the various business actors and their roles; and a description of the potential benefits for the various business actors; and description of the sources of revenues.” (Timmers 1998, p.4). It turns out that this definition was used widely and is still referenced today. Remarkably, the article has received the highest number of downloads and citations of all Electronic Markets articles so far. Following Harzing the article has scored a total of 2’283 citations (as per October 2014), which is considerably more than the second ranked article on citizen adoption of eGovernment (Warkentin et al. 2002) with a total of 434 citations. Another contribution on business models ranks third with some 404 citations. This is the preface to Electronic Markets’ first special issue on business models (Alt and Zimmermann 2001), which not only introduced the four research papers of the special issue at that time, but also aimed at summarizing existing knowledge in business model research. The paper started by analyzing the usage of the term “business model” in various databases and revealed only a limited proliferation. This has changed considerably as Table 1 shows with a sample of the same searches today and a total of 600 mentions in Electronic Markets papers in various contexts of business models since. Another analysis on the number of papers published in Web of Science journals even revealed some 4’000 mentions (DaSilva and Trikman 2013). It is astonishing that despite publications including the title term “business model” have attracted many writers, Teece (2010, p.192) concludes that the “paucity of literature (both theoretical and practical) on the topic is remarkable, given the importance of business design, particularly in the context of innovation.” In view of this statement, let us take the opportunity of this editorial to reflect on some aspects of the business model construct. First, business models are accepted as important elements in the construction of an organization’s strategic positioning and offerings in the market. Following the principle of models, they reduce real world complexity by representing only relevant design elements for a specific design purpose (Baden-Fuller and Morgan 2010). All other intricacies existent in the real world, which might be relevant for other purposes, should be suppressed. Thus, business models are helpful in mapping the specific ingredients and mechanics of understanding how a business works. Due to the obvious link to business strategy, a question that was raised is how business R. Alt (*) Information Systems Institute, University of Leipzig, Grimmaische Str. 12, 04109 Leipzig, Germany e-mail: rainer.alt@uni-leipzig.de

Electronic Markets on self-archiving

Dear readers of Electronic Markets, Welcome to the first issue of volume 26, which includes a collection of six articles. Three articles address the special theme on BICT-based Networked Governance^, while another three are general research contributions. Prior to introducing these articles, the editorial links to the last editorial in issue 25/ 4, which discussed the reviewing process as the key element in safeguarding the quality of academic work (Alt et al. 2015a). Especially academic journals with a high impact factor feature competitive review processes, since many authors are interested in publishing their work in these journals. As indicated in Fig. 1, this is a self-reinforcing mechanism, as a large number of authors is attracted to publishing in these journals due to the importance of highly ranked publications for academic repuation and their role in academic qualification processes. Since researchers usually submit their best work to these journals and the journal’s space for accepted papers is limited, the successful papers feature a high maturity, which in turn increases the probability of becoming cited. Journals with many frequently cited articles are likely to have a higher impact factor, which again increases the incentives for authors to submit their work to the respective journal.

Editorial 25/4: Electronic Markets on reviewing

Dear readers of Electronic Markets, The last two editorials reported that Electronic Markets managed to improve its standing in two important rankings: the step from C to B in Jourqual3 (Alt et al. 2015a) and the increase of EM’s impact factor from 0.769 to 0.935 (Alt & Zimmermann 2015). Although many influences are relevant for this development, the processes within the journal are certainly one important variable. As known from the literature on process management, processes link activities performed by multiple actors in a specified sequence to attain an output that creates value for the customers of the process (Osterle 1995, 62). From the perspective of an academic journal, multiple actors are involved in the submission, review and publishing process. The ultimate goal is to create value for the academic community, which refers to the advancement of the entire field of digital or electronic business (processes) with meaningful and high-quality contributions (Alt and Osterle 2014a). As in a networked world, the value system of an academic journal is complex and dynamic. Isolating a single variable is difficult and very often one outcome is not only determined by many input factors, but also by itself. For example, highquality contributions are influenced by good submissions and review processes, but also by the journal’s ranking, which in turn has been calculated by the impact of prior – presumably also high-quality – published articles. Thus, a high impact factor and above-average rankings also attract highquality research in the future. Not all Bdesign variables^ of the journal system are amenable to direct action by the journal itself. At Electronic Markets, this is a big and continuous team effort between the editorial team, the senior, associate and guest editors as well as the editorial board andmany additional reviewers. The current organization structure has evolved over the last 25 years: as described in a chronological overview (Alt et al. 2015b, 2) the double-blind review process and the international editorial board was introduced in 1999. In 2008, the role of associate editors and in 2012, the role of senior editors was created to secure quality in view of rising submission volumes. Since special issues have been a key characteristic of Electronic Markets almost from the beginning, the guest editor’s role has also had a longer tradition. However, with a growing number of submissions and participants the challenge of managing the entire system also increased. Everyone, who is familiar with the academic world, has probably experienced the deficits of long response and/or cycle times as an author, the disappointment about brief and/or unenlightened reviews as an author or editor as well as the problem of meeting the expectations of providing substantial feedback in time as a reviewer or editor. Very often, academics act in many roles for multiple journals as well as conferences at the same time. Although reviewing is at the heart of the academic system, it generates a heavy workload. At present, a total of 3’217 journals are listed only in the SSCI index and if each journal includes four issues per year the number of issues accounts for 12’868 issues per year. Assuming that each issue includes a collection of five articles on average, the number of articles raises to 64’340 and if each article receives an average of two reviews, 128’680 reviews alone are produced for accepted articles. Suppose that only 50 % of all * Rainer Alt rainer.alt@uni-leipzig.de