A competitive strategy framework for E-business start-ups

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The strategic tools and insights that e-business start-ups require to better formulate their competitive strategies are obscured by the staggering amounts of strategy literature that is available. Yet at the same time, given the relative recency of the Internet, research in the e-domain is still in its infancy. An opportunity for strategic sense-making and integration was therefore identified to make these tools and insights more accessible, while simultaneously deepening the understanding of e-business.The objective of this study was to develop a conceptualisation that could assist e-business start-up competitive strategy formulation. Competitive strategy in this context refers to how a business intends to compete in the market and how it intends to defend its chosen competitive position.In conducting the research, a constructivist philosophical perspective and a practice-oriented approach was embraced, which required the developed conceptualisation to present a more informed and sophisticated perspective than previously existed, while also providing practical utility in the real world. A basic systems engineering process was followed for this exploratory theory building study. This involved creating a set of requirements that needed to be met by the conceptualisation, designing the conceptualisation and its sub-models, and verifying and validating that the conceptualisation met the requirements.The research endeavour investigated four main domains of interest, namely e-business, business models, blue ocean strategy and red ocean strategy. Four sub-domains were also investigated, namely fundamentals of e-business strategy, business model innovation, e-value creation and e-customer retention. Together these domains produced 46 content requirements that needed to be addressed in addition to the 17 research question requirements and 18 theoretical model building requirements.The output of the study was a competitive strategy framework that exists on three levels of complexity. It consists of five primary elements (customer need exploration, value proposition, customer lock-in, strategic assessment, renewal and growth), nine sub-elements, 18 sub-models, various relationships and a flexible sequence. The validation process (local, international and via workshops) confirmed that the developed competitive strategy framework has achieved its goal and is capable of assisting e-business start-up competitive strategy learning, formulation and analysis, resulting in enhanced cognition. In addition, e-business practitioners regarded the framework as a better methodology for formulating competitive strategies than their previous approaches.This study scratches at the surface of all the aspects and complexities related to competing in the e-domain. The competitive strategy framework for e-business start-ups, however, is an important stepping stone towards developing a better understanding of the e-environment itself, how to formulate business strategies for this environment and how to successfully compete within it.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University