Investing in a Website: A Top Dog or a Resource-Based Strategy for Firms?

Ludivine Martin and Thierry Pénard

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This article is aimed at analyzing the motivations on the part of firms to invest in websites. What are the drivers behind such investments? In order to address this issue, we have considered two alternative theoretical frameworks. The first relies upon resourcebased theory; the approach herein states that firms with greater resources and competencies are expected to invest more heavily in Internet technologies, especially those firms present in rent-yielding markets (concentrated markets with strong entry barriers). The theory of industrial organization constitutes a second framework and leads to the alternative conjecture that firms should have more incentive to invest in a website when they are in highly-competitive markets. A website can indeed serve as a strategic means for creating artificial entry barriers and eliminating rivals. We have tested these two hypotheses using a French database and found the resource-based approach to be more relevant in explaining the drivers of website investment. In particular, firms tend to invest more in websites when markets are highly concentrated and little exposed to international trade.

Keywords: Internet strategy; e-commerce; entry barriers; resource-based theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 L10 L41 L96 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in International Journal of Digital Economics 59 (2005): pp. 77-98

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2503/1/MPRA_paper_2503.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Investing in a website: a top dog or a resource-based strategy for firms ? (2006)
Working Paper: Investing in a website: a top dog or a resource-based strategy for firms? (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:2503

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().