Virtual value chain

Abstract: In electronic commerce, businesses require to integrate two kinds of activities – ones that are embedded into the physical value chains and the others that are built through information into the virtual chain. Although the relative importance of these two kinds of chain depends on the characteristics of the products and services, their integration, nevertheless, plays a critical role in the success of e‐commerce. In e‐commerce, more and more value chain activities are conducted electronically, therefore, businesses should understand the implication of the virtual value chain activities. The virtual chain offers a number of distinct advantages over the physical value chain. Some of these advantages lie in forging alliances between customers and manufacturers, advertising products and services selectively with effects of audio, video, and graphics, and saving time and money in efficiently processing customer orders and enquiries. Besides, e‐commerce offers flexibility in option pricing and customization of products and service, by reducing the constraints of time and space.

Abstract: Babson College So far electronic commerce has primarily been limited to electronic business-to-business transactions and small, but quickly growing, consumer-oriented activities on the Internet, such as electronic advertisements mated with the traditional mail-order operations. What lies ahead in the future is a concept of true global electronic commerce (GEC), in which firms will exploit a virtual value chain to migrate much of their value-adding activities from the physical marketplace to the virtual marketplace. The capability for business concerns to be able to reach out to a global business community at a relatively small cost is very attractive and promises to transform international business. Despite this realization, it has become increasingly evident that the proliferation of GEC is dependent on resolution of a myriad of technical, organizational, economic, cultural, political, and legal issues. In this study, field studies of 10 companies in Hong Kong and Finland were conducted with an eye towar...

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between IOS-enabled business process change and business outcomes. A generic framework for analyzing IT-enabled business process change is applied to a case study analysis of Japan Airlines (JAL). Drawing on a resource-based view of the firm, we investigate the ways in which IOS not only contributed to JAL's improved competitiveness but also enabled it more folly to leverage its strategic value chain as an engine of growth and a new source of competitive advantage. Our focus is on JAL's strategic use of the AXESS Computer Reservation System and Electronic Data Interchange, developed with a clear strategic intention to support JAL's emerging strategies on customer service, sales, value chain logistics coordination, and cost reduction. JAL's collaboration with the IOS-transformed virtual value chain firms significantly contributed to JAL's business growth and competitiveness. JAL's time-based competitiveness has been improved through its IOS-enabled interfirm joint product innovation cycle time reduction. Journal of Management Information Systems I Summer 1997, Vol. 14, No. l,pp. 13-40. © 1997 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 0742-1222 / 1997 $9.50 + 0.00. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.163 on Sat, 19 Nov 2016 04:23:00 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 14 CHATFIELD AND BJ0RN-ANDERSEN