Towards understanding network relationships in online retailing

Abstract

This paper views e-commerce (B2C) as a retail innovation that evolves along with newly emerging technological system around the Internet. In the case of e-commerce, this system consists of retailers as adopters and co-developers of technological solutions invented/commercialized by specialists. As part of 'new economy' business practices, what is needed for establishing successful e-commerce venture in terms of tangible resources and competences is not necessarily acquired internally but are coordinated via network relationships. The paper proposes to identify different e-commerce strategies, and outlines the kinds of actors involved in the networks that seem to go along with each strategy. While suggesting that different e-commerce strategies correspond to different networking strategies it points at the importance of relational competences in varying online retailing contexts.