Exploring the impact of industry structure on the emergence of e-marketplaces.

Abstract

The emergence of e-marketplaces is a tremendous phenomenon across nearly all industry in the beginning of 21st century. As a population of strategic IT initiative, e-marketplaces interact with their surrounding industry structures to win their competitive advantages. In this research, the impact of industry structure on e-marketplaces is investigated through the inter-organizational network roles e-marketplaces play and the industry linkages e-marketplaces own. Based on intensive literature review, the dissertation developed a theoretic model and its propositions for the interaction between industry structures and e-marketplaces characteristics. Using both the quantitative and qualitative methods, the dissertation found that the success of e-marketplaces in a particular industry structure was determined by the interaction among three different industry structures and various types of e-marketplaces business models and governance models.