Ecommerce - Strategy:

What is Competitive advantage?

• Strategy is …

  • A high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty
  • A set of

• Competitive advantage is …

example : what is apple’s competitive advantage? What is shaomi’s competitive advantage?

Key Question Why do you customers choose your company over every other competitor in the market?

How does IT enable Competitive advantage?

• Focus on market niche

USE information systems to enable specific market focus, and serve narrow target market better than competitors.

• Differentiation

Use information systems to enable new products and services, or greatly change the customer convenience in using your existing product and services.

Vertical differentiation Horizontal differentiation

• Low - cost Leadership

Use information systems to achieve the lowest operational costs and the lowest prices. Case: Walmart

• Strengthen customer and supplier intimacy

Use info system to build strong linakges to customers and suppliers -> increase switching costs and loyalty

Internal analysis

Resource Based View

Resources

• Tangible and intangible assets of a firm

Tangible : factories, products, inventories

Intangible : Brand, organizational process, intellectual property

• Capabilities

A subset of resources that enable a firm to take full advantage…

VRIO framework:

Is it…

• Valuable?
• Rare?
• Difficult to Imitate?
• exploited by organization? (supported by organization?)
  • is the firm organized to capture…

IT resources

IT resources: …

IT capabilities: …