Digital Entrepreneurship and Value Beyond: Why to Not Purely Play Online

Alina Arlott (), Tassilo Henike () and Katharina Hölzle ()
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Alina Arlott: Audibene
Tassilo Henike: University of Potsdam
Katharina Hölzle: University of Potsdam

A chapter in Digital Entrepreneurship, 2019, pp 1-22 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Digitalization has caused one of the most fundamental, behavioral shifts in human history and, in particular, how new as well as established companies operate in marketplaces. A large portion of the most valuable, worldwide companies nowadays concentrate on providing digital services without owning associated products or producing them. Yet, in a surprising change of strategy, an increasing number of these online pure players are now going into the opposite direction and open offline stores. This is surprising because these ventures are turning their disrupting success formula into the reverse. This raises the question why do successful online pure players turn to offline channels and what do they gain from it? Furthermore, what can (digital) entrepreneurs learn from these experiences? We used four case studies including interviews and observations within the German health, consumer electronics, home furniture, and food industry to answer these questions. In this chapter, we show that the addition of a physical, offline presence adds value for these new ventures in a functional, emotional/social, economic, and status dimension. The interviewees confirmed that, sooner or later, many ventures must go offline. Only services that have a dominant online position have the chance to survive as pure online players.

Keywords: Digital entrepreneurship; Online pure players; Multi-channeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-20138-8_1

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