An Application of an Ecological Model to Explain the Growth of Strategies of Internet Firms:: The Cases of eBay and Amazon

Abstract

Companies doing business on the Internet have experienced environmental turbulence from early growth and subsequent decline as businesses failed. The Internet provides a unique opportunity to examine the evolution of a business sector over a relatively short time period. Biological models to represent and predict the competitive dynamics within a business sector have been utilized. Using the analogy of strategies used in natural systems, this paper will demonstrate the applicability of using a model of population dynamics to companies that have survived the burst of the Internet bubble, specifically the cases of Amazon and eBay.