The Phantom of the Marketplace: Searching for New E-Commerce Business Models

Abstract

It is widely anticipated that over the next decade Internet-based e-commerce will enable entirely new kinds of business ventures to become substantial new engines of economic growth. The "business model " has emerged as an important concept in this scenario, with much of the current debate revolving around the evolution of new business models. As e-commerce can play a role in changing various processes of production and distribution, the argument is that it could result in modification or even replacement of established business models on a very large scale. Problematically, the debate about the evolution of business models is largely a product of the e-commerce milieu. As a concept, it remains largely a peripheral item in the literature. For economists, most of the issues now often discussed in a business model context could be absorbed quite easily into established debates about firm boundaries, pricing models and so forth. Moreover, until very recently, the concept had not appeared to any significant extent in the mainstream management and industrial organisation literature. Moreover, when it does occur, it is more often than not a redundant synonym for "business plan " or "business process model", concepts that are already well enough defined. More problematical still, most of examples that are given of "new" business models are little more than miscellaneous examples of commercial activities that just happen to occur on the Internet. The result is random lists of activities, rather than the systematic development of taxonomies and (*) This paper was prepared under the auspices of the STAR consortium, funded by the