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Web 2.0 and Digital Business Models
Abstract
The increasing acceptance and prevalence of the Internet as a modern information and communications technology has advanced the commercial use and enabled the development of digital business models. Since 2005, increasing Internet services can be noted in this context, that can be associated with the phenomenon of Web 2.0 and that changed the Internet Economy (Wirtz 2010, p. 328). This paper analyses the strategic implications of the changes of digital business models through Web 2.0. For this reason, Internet business models are first classified based on the 4C-Net-Business-Model typology (Wirtz 2000; Wirtz and Lihotzky 2003, p. 522), then the term Web 2.0 is defined and an empirically validated model of explanation regarding strategically relevant components of the Web 2.0 is shown (Wirtz et al. 2010). Using these components, the influence of Web 2.0 on single Internet business models is explained. Thereby, various Web 2.0 applications are assigned to the business models. Moreover, the effect of individual Web 2.0 components towards the applications is explained and implications for practice are derived.
... The evaluation tool was a questionnaire completed by the participation group who rated the system's abilities on a 5-point Likert scales anchored by 5 as strongly agree to 1 being strongly disagree. The questionnaire was divided into commerce, content, context, and communication [18], [25], [26]. The results of the evaluation will be used to further develop the prototype system prior to the implementation of the real system. ...
This study revealed the limitations of freelancers’ inability to perform portfolios and biographies, their performance ratings to a large community of customers. The difficulties were evident in searching for reliable, qualified and experienced freelancers from multi-channel information sources. These limitations might impact the ability of freelancers selected by customers to perform the required task to the customers’ satisfaction. This research focused on the case study of the freelance community for photography business in southern of Thailand. This aims to establish an online facility in which freelance photographers can publicize their services and performance to potential customers. The concepts entailed in web portals and e-services were the key elements in the development and ensured that its functions worked efficiently. The study employed qualitative methods were used to assess the current practices of web portal and thus determining the requirements for the e-service web portal for freelance community. The practical contribution is that it can aid the effective design and implementation of an e-service web portal for the freelance community of photography business, and it is a massive step towards promoting the freelance community in Thailand.
... O'Reilly (2009) highlights the entrepreneurial aspect thanks to the emergence of new business models and the technical aspect via new software or new services (Schallmo and Williams 2018). Wirtz and Lihotzky first theorized these models in 2000 under the term 4 C-Net-Business-Model (Wirtz et al. 2013). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a very strong reminder that the future economic development of any country is more than ever influenced by its ability to ramp-up digital competitiveness. Consequently, enterprises were pushed to assess and develop the possibilities offered by e-commerce and online marketing tools. In this book, experts outline the prerequisites for such online marketing competitiveness and compare the current level of digital marketing competitiveness in Europe by using publicly available macro and micro-level data. The authors present their analyses and recommendations including interviews with over 125 online marketers and e-commerce specialists and present the lessons from digitalization of over 600 SMEs.
... O'Reilly (2009) highlights the entrepreneurial aspect thanks to the emergence of new business models and the technical aspect via new software or new services (Schallmo and Williams 2018). Wirtz and Lihotzky first theorized these models in 2000 under the term 4 C-Net-Business-Model (Wirtz et al. 2013). ...
Consumers make their purchasing decisions based on information that is also related to emotions. Customers prefer transparent information that allows them to trust companies and then show interest in their services or products. Corporate social responsibility is one of the critical factors influencing the image. Because the concept of CSR significantly affects the perception of the company among customers and society. Strengthening the image is one of the fundamental goals of marketing. The CSR concept is thus one of the possible aspects of strengthening the image and thus having the edge over the competition. This chapter examines the relationships between CSR communication, brand reputation, and customer shopping intentions.
... O'Reilly (2009) highlights the entrepreneurial aspect thanks to the emergence of new business models and the technical aspect via new software or new services (Schallmo and Williams 2018). Wirtz and Lihotzky first theorized these models in 2000 under the term 4 C-Net-Business-Model (Wirtz et al. 2013). ...
To stand out and face the growing demand from customers to obtain products and services online, several SMEs are implementing digital transformation strategies. It became evident that many factors other than technology are required to ensure the digital transformation’s completion and success. However, the global pandemic of Covid-19 showed that many SMEs struggle significantly to implement Internet and online platforms into their strategies to achieve a decent level of e-commerce competitiveness. In this chapter, we combine secondary information, opinions of experts in online marketing, and the experience of SMEs to identify which factors affect the capacity of businesses to embrace the digital environment. Based on these findings, we propose an evaluative framework allowing business to assess their current level of e-commerce readiness.
... Web 2.0 is a new form of Internet [19], which contains huge potential business opportunities, but has also stimulated the emergence of a large number of spammers. Therefore, the identification technology of spammers has been extensively studied. ...
With the development of mobile Internet, it is changing the way we communicate with others. Internet media have gradually become the main mobile crowdsourcing applications for information dissemination and user communication, including online news and social networks. However, the potential business opportunities have stimulated the emergence of a large number of spammers, who release false speech, advertisements, pornographic contents, and phishing websites on the media to gain commercial benefits, which seriously affects the experience of normal users. Therefore, in order to reduce the harm of false information, the research on the identification technology of spammers has been carried out extensively. However, the traditional technologies of identifying spammers involve high data costs and poor effects, and most of them are concentrated in the field of social networks, while less research is carried out in the field of online news. In this paper, we propose an effective technology of identifying online news comment spammers based on the label propagation algorithm (LPA), making full use of the user comment behaviors and contents. First of all, we collect a large amount of news and comments from NetEase News, and label some users in the data as spammers or normal users manually to construct a labeled dataset. Then, a set of behavioral and semantic features are extracted and quantified from the user comment behaviors and comment contents by statistical analysis. Next, we propose the identification technology based on the LPA. Finally, the set of feature values is input into the proposed technology in different combinations, and experiments and evaluations are carried out to determine the most effective combination of features and improve the technology. The results show that the technology proposed in this paper involves a lower data cost but a better identification effect than some traditional technologies based on the supervised classifier.
Purpose
This study aims to identify the social representation of cloud computing from the perspective of Information Technology (IT) professionals in emerging countries, comparing it with the extant literature on this subject.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from IT professionals in Brazil, which was used as a proxy for the emerging countries’ context related to cloud computing. Social Representation Theory was then applied to analyze the data.
Findings
Mismatches between theory and practice on cloud computing make it clear that most of the current scientific literature on cloud computing is, to a great extent, based on the context of developed countries rather than on the context of emerging ones.
Research limitations/implications
Errors of inference may have been made during the categorization of the words evoked. Furthermore, Brazil was used as a proxy for the emerging countries’ context related to cloud computing.
Practical implications
IT professionals in emerging countries have quite an operational view of cloud computing. Thus, companies in these countries have to align cloud computing better with new business models and corporate strategies in order to take advantage of the transformational impacts of cloud computing.
Originality/value
IT professionals in emerging countries have failed to notice the strategic value of cloud computing, the new business models enabled by same, the privacy issues related to it and the impact cloud computing adoption can have on the IT costs of an organization. Moreover, mobility can be a paramount issue related to cloud computing in emerging countries – a fact thus far overlooked by academia.
RESUMO Este estudo busca identificar a representação social sobre Cloud Computing, pela percepção dos profissionais brasileiros de Tecnologia da Informação (TI). Os dados empíricos foram coletados por meio de questionários on-line respondidos por uma amostra por acessibilidade de 221 profissionais de TI e analisados por meio da Teoria da Representação Social (TRS), operacionalizada pelas técnicas de evocação livres de palavras e do quadro de quatro casas de Vergès, bem como pelas análises implicativa, léxica e de conteúdo. Como resultado, identificou-se que o núcleo central da representação social associada ao Cloud Computing é composto pelas palavras: nuvem, armazenamento, disponibilidade, internet, virtualização e segurança. Assim, conclui-se que os profissionais de TI no Brasil têm uma visão mais operacional do que estratégica do Cloud Computing. Essa visão funcional, congruente com parte da literatura científica sobre o tema, fundamenta-se basicamente em aspectos relacionados à segurança, armazenamento e disponibilidade dos dados armazenados no Cloud Computing, faltando uma percepção do valor estratégico do Cloud Computing, baseada na viabilização de novos modelos de negócio. Finalmente, este artigo traz uma contribuição metodológica original ao usar a TRS - por meio da aplicação conjunta das análises implicativa, léxica e de conteúdo - na definição de um constructo específico.
Business process improvement (BPI) ranks among the topics of highest priority in modern organizations. However, considering the rapidly changing customer requirements in times of high market transparency and the increasing collaboration between organizations, the development of BPI projects has become very challenging. Implicit process knowledge from diverse process participants needs to be elicited and transformed into improvement opportunities. In this context, the results achieved need to be properly documented, communicated and processed throughout a company. To face these challenges, we introduce the so-called BPI roadmap which is a concept for systematically performing BPI initiatives based on a set of easy-to-use and proven BPI techniques. Further, tool support is established allowing the efficient codification of results via conceptual model types, the easy sharing of the outcomes and the automatic generation of reports.
Within the user-generated content sites, the role and growth of social networking sites has been undeniably overwhelming. Social networking sites (SNS) generate millions of dollars in revenue and advertising, yet little is known about why college students join and participate in these sites, which allow users to create their own content or space. This study adopts survey methodology to investigate the influence of college students' level of Internet self-efficacy, need to belong, need for cognition, and collective self-esteem on their attitude toward SNS. Internet self-efficacy, need to belong, and collective self-esteem all have positive effects on attitudes toward SNS. Furthermore, attitude toward SNS mediates the relationship between willingness to join SNS and (1) Internet self-efficacy and (2) need to belong, and the mediation is only partial between willingness to join and collective self-esteem. The author also draws managerial implications.
This paper identifies the technological and commercial foundations of the new category of online applications commonly described as Web 2.0 or Social Media. It examines the relevance of Web 2.0 for Marketing Strategy and for Direct Marketing in particular. The issue is not a clear-cut one: while several observers saw in Web 2.0 a new stage in the evolution of the internet, others simply rejected it as a new High-Tech hype while there is still no generally accepted definition and demarcation of the term. Paradoxically, even without an accepted definition and despite lack of extensive research, the corporate world seems to embrace the Web 2.0 concept: high-profile mergers and acquisitions have already taken place or are under way while corporations are rushing to integrate various forms of social media into their marketing planning. The experience so far, based to a large degree on anecdotal evidence, is that Web 2.0 has a substantial effect on consumer behaviour and has contributed to an unprecedented customer empowerment. The consequences are far reaching, affecting not only the area of technology development but also the domains of business strategy and marketing. From the academic but also the practical point of view, attention must be placed on the demarcation and evaluation of the new technologies and trends so that the real value of Web 2.0 as a component of the modern marketing can be determined.
The advent of Web 2.0 technologies has enabled the efficient creation and distribution of user-generated content (UGC), resulting in vast changes in the online media landscape. For instance, the proliferation of UGC has made a strong impact on consumers, media suppliers, and marketing professionals while necessitating research in order to understand both the short and long-term implications of this media content. This exploratory study (n = 325) seeks to investigate consumer consumption and creation of UGC and the attitudinal factors that contribute to these actions. The data confirm the established relationship between attitude and behavior and indicate attitude serves as a mediating factor between the use and creation of UGC. With regard to the creation of UGC, the ego-defensive and social functions of attitude were found to have the most explanatory power. During the past several decades, the media landscape has evolved into a complex and dynamic conglomeration of both traditional and interactive media that seek to serve the needs of today's fast-paced lifestyles. While traditional media struggle under the weight of increased segmentation, the interactive environment provides the capacity to capitalize on this fragmented market by offering niche media vehicles that give consumers a voice amidst the whirlwind of information and advertising. In the online world, these niche media markets increasingly are driven less by publishers and more by user-generated content (UGC). User-generated content refers to media content created or produced by the general public rather than by paid professionals and primarily distributed on the Internet. Although the creation and dissemination of content has been a constant for hundreds of years, the potential for an ordinary consumer to communicate with and influence a mass audience was only recently put within reach given the advent of Web 2.0 technologies. Examples of prominent Web 2.0-based Web sites that support the creation and consumption of UGC include YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, StupidVideos, Flickr, Blogger, and personal Web pages, among many others. With the explosion of Web 2.0 technologies, UGC creates a plethora of niche markets within the media landscape that attract more than 69 million users and generate more than $450 million in advertising revenue (Verna 2007). As a result, the online information market continues to shift toward a user-centric model and away from the conventional media model, characterized as publisher-centric. Consumers today are active and in charge of their media experiences, making it more important than ever to understand motivational factors that drive media consumption (McQuail 2000). This power shift challenges media theorists to change the way they
This study examines if Facebook, one of the most popular social network sites among college students in the U.S., is related to attitudes and behaviors that enhance individuals' social capital. Using data from a random web survey of college students across Texas (n = 2,603), we find positive relationships between intensity of Facebook use and students' life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation. While these findings should ease the concerns of those who fear that Facebook has mostly negative effects on young adults, the positive and significant associations between Facebook variables and social capital were small, suggesting that online social networks are not the most effective solution for youth disengagement from civic duty and democracy.
Keywords chronicle and capture cultural change by creating common categories of meaning against diverse local usages. We call
this the global-local tension. To test competing theories of this tension, we employ frame analysis of more than 500 journal abstracts over a 25-year period,
tracking the spread of business model as an economic keyword generated during unsettled economic times. Analyses reveal the simultaneous adoption of “global” and
“local”frames without one supplanting or co-opting the other. The global-local tension is conciliated by providing primacy
across communities of discourse to a small collection of frames (i.e., the global presence) while maintaining a plurality
of local use within communities (i.e., the local alternative).
Understanding virtual community development provides a foundation for facilitating collaboration and learning among individuals separated by physical distance and organizational boundaries. Migrating offline communities into online virtual communities has the potential to significantly improve their efficiency and ability to support the sharing of critical information and knowledge in a timely fashion. A virtual community can be seen as a group in which individuals come together around a shared purpose, interest, or goal. Typical computer-mediated community interaction includes news and information sharing, and routine communication. Four stimulation driver are proposed based on prior studies of the challenges and stimulants in virtual communities consisting leader involvement, offline interaction, usefulness, and IT infrastructure quality. More complex strategies for reinforcing virtual communities should be explored, as they are more used for collaboration and social support.
To date, one of the main aims of the World Wide Web has been to provide users with information. In addition to private homepages, large professional information providers, including news services, companies, and other organisations have set up web-sites. With the development and advance of recent technologies such as wikis, blogs, podcasting and file sharing this model is challenged and community-driven services are gaining influence rapidly. These new paradigms obliterate the clear distinction between information providers and consumers. The lines between producers and consumers are blurred even more by services such as Wikipedia, where every reader can become an author, instantly. This paper presents an overview of a broad selection of current technologies and services: blogs, wikis including Wikipedia and Wikinews, social networks such as Friendster and Orkut as well as related social services like del.icio.us, file sharing tools such as Flickr, and podcasting. These services enable user participation on the Web and manage to recruit a large number of users as authors of new content. It is argued that the transformations the Web is subject to are not driven by new technologies but by a fundamental mind shift that encourages individuals to take part in developing new structures and content. The evolving services and technologies encourage ordinary users to make their knowledge explicit and help a collective intelligence to develop.
A new type of communities is gaining momentum on the web and is reshaping online communication and collaboration patterns and the way how information is consumed and produced. Examples of such communities are Wikipedia, MySpace, OpenBC, YouTube, Folksonomies, numerous Weblogs and others. In literature different terms can be found to denote the emerging and growing new phenomenon: social software or peer production. In the year 2005, Tim O'Reilly popularized the term Web 2.0 . While the first two terms can be applied also to earlier, already established forms of online communities, the term Web 2.0 is mostly applied to emphasize the differences of emerging communities compared to earlier forms of online communities, encompassing various perspectives - technology, attitude, philosophy. While, recently the mass media have picked up broadly the term Web 2.0 and the related phenomenon of emerging online communities, there has been less attention in the scientific community. First papers are available that try to define the phenomenon and to relate it to existing developments. Other papers categorize Web 2.0 communities and provide a first detailed description of the various kind of communities. There are also first papers that focus on a certain type of Web 2.0 communities as for example: social networking communities, Online Encyclopedias, Folksonomies. The most widely researched phenomenon are Web-blogs .
Corporate innovation management geared to long-term success calls for a strategy to grow innovations into a substantial competitive advantage. This, however, coincides with an enormous failure-rate at the market, especially in the field of breakthrough innovations. Hence, in recent times, companies are trying to alleviate the risk of lacking user-acceptance through opening their innovation processes to external actors, particularly customers. The method of integrating lead users is determined by the effective and systematic identification of leading-edge customers, which is considered to be a critical phase within this approach. With the arrival of Web 2.0 applications, there is a huge potential to improve these selection processes. Our research into online communities and weblogs scrutinised the search criteria in an online environment and revealed the following characteristics as crucial factors for the online identification of lead users: being ahead of a market trend, high expected benefits, user expertise and motivation, extreme user needs as well as opinion leadership and an online commitment.
Electronic commerce over the Internet may be either complementary to traditional business or represent a whole new line of the new features of the Internet, critical questions to be answered include:
♦ what are the emerging business models; and related to this
♦ which strategic marketing approaches are applied, or emerging.
This article addresses the first question above by providing a framework for the classification of Internet electronic commerce business models. This framework has been developed on the basis of current commercial Internet business and experimental work in European R&D programmes.
This article presents a network analysis of electronic word-of-mouth referral communication in a real life online environment. The goal of the paper was to clarify the existing terminology of electronic word-of-mouth behavior, to examine the kind of network structure that will emerge in the electronic environment, and finally to explore the impact of the network structure on the acceptance of an innovation in such a communication environment. Results indicated that the structure of an electronic communication network is different from the traditional interpersonal communication network structure. This study also showed that the network structure affects innovation adoption timing in the electronic communication environment, as a centralized network structure leads towards early adoption and as tie strength and adoption timing are related.
Marketing managers are being required to demonstrate the profitability of their marketing actions down to the level of their individual customers and on an ongoing basis. At the same time, customers expect firms to increasingly customize their products and services to meet their demands. Firms still need to produce superior products, sell smarter, and understand the markets as a whole, but the ability of firms to orient themselves to interact successfully with their individual customers will differentiate them in the future. Advances in technology have resulted in increasing opportunities for interactions between firms and customers, between customers, and between firms. An interaction orientation reflects a firm's ability to interact with its individual customers and to take advantage of information obtained from them through successive interactions to achieve profitable customer relationships. First, the authors identify the components of interaction orientation: (1) customer concept, (2) interaction response capacity, (3) customer empowerment, and (4) customer value management. Second, they relate interaction orientation to both customer-level and aggregate-level performance measures. Third, they identify the antecedents of interaction orientation. Fourth, they examine the moderating effects of customer-initiated contacts and competitive intensity on the interaction orientation-performance linkage. The results are based on a survey of top marketing managers. The commonly held view that customer-based relational performance is related to customer-based profit performance is not supported. However, both customer-based relational performance and customer-based profit performance affect aggregate business-level performance positively. Interaction orientation is a phenomenon observed in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer firms. The extent of customer-initiated contacts moderates the interaction orientation-performance relationship.
There is virtually a consensus that, to remain competitive, firms must continuously develop and adapt their business models. However, relatively little is known about how managers can go about achieving this transformation, and how, and to what extent, different types of business models should be adapted. To illustrate the differential effect of environmental changes on different business model types, this article draws from the ‘4C’ Internet business model typology to elaborate on how a recent wave of changes on the Internet – the emergent Web 2.0 phenomenon – is affecting each of its four business model types. We argue that Web 2.0 trends and characteristics are changing the rules of the ‘create and capture value’ game, and thus significantly disrupt the effectiveness of established Internet business models. Since systematic empirical knowledge about Web 2.0 factors is very limited, a comprehensive Web 2.0 framework is developed, which is illustrated with two cases and verified through in-depth interviews with Internet business managers. Strategic recommendations on how to what extent different Web 2.0 aspects affect each business model type are developed. Executives can use the ideas and frameworks presented in the article to benchmark their firm's efforts towards embracing the changes associated with the Web 2.0 into their business model.
This article explores the conceptual problems surrounding popular definitions of Web 2.0 and proposes an alternative approach to understanding the cultural dimension of Web 2.0. Drawing parallels between the discursive and analytical challenges of Web 2.0 and online communities, this article suggests that a theoretical framework, based on Bourdieu's theory of field and habitus, can be applied to theorizing Web 2.0 sites. This framework re-conceives websites as structured spaces that interact with given dispositions, or modes of engagement, that make users' practice and participation meaningful. Applying this framework, an analysis of online communities and their evolution from 1998 to 2004 demonstrates a shift in community fields that suggests an increasing tendency towards personalist modes of engagement.
Marketing practitioners have recognized a need to measure customer-generated media in addition to the traditional marketing metrics. Message boards, chat rooms, blogs, and virtual brand communities have become important venues for customer generated media. These communities can be modeled as two distinct, albeit connected, networks: social and informational. These networks change over time under the influence of online word of mouth. This study introduces an adaptation of PageRank as a new metric for measuring the value a community assigns each word-of-mouth instance and the value the community assigns to the members that create them. That metric is used to empirically support a model explaining how highly valued information builds the social network. These communities are egalitarian in assigning value to informational content, without regard to the status of its source, and highly valued content explains 10% of social network growth.
Business and operations strategists have long sought to formulate strategies that would serve profitably for a market of one. Two decades after its conception, there is growing evidence that mass customization strategy is transforming into a mass personalization strategy, making the market of one a reality, at least in select industries. The degree of transformation of a company depends
on the extent to which its product is soft, i.e., can be produced electronically. Thus, at the lower end of the personalization
spectrum are manufacturing companies engaged in producing hard, configurable products, while on the high end of the spectrum
are service companies whose product can be totally configured and delivered electronically. The underlying factors that are
enabling this transformation, in our view, are: (1) development of information technologies such as peer to peer (P2P), business
to consumer (B2C), and Web 2.0, (2) near-universal availability of the Internet, (3) customer willingness and preparedness
to be integrated into the process of product co-design and co-creation, (4) modern manufacturing systems, such as flexible
manufacturing and, of course, (5) mass customization tools such as modularity and delayed differentiation, which help reduce manufacturing cost and cycle times and (6) deployment of customer-satisfaction-specific software called
customer relationship management (CRM) to engender customer retention. Due to the importance and strategic success of affordable
personalization, this issue is dedicated to that theme. The articles included in this issue would, I believe, serve as significant
decision support mechanisms for companies pursuing a mass customization and personalization strategy. In addition to providing
a brief perspective on articles included in this issue, we also summarize the state of the art of mass customization research.
Online consumer groups represent a large pool of product know-how. Hence, they seem to be a promising source of innovation.
At present, except for open source software, little is known about how to utilize this know-how for new product development.
In this article we explore if and how members of virtual communities can be integrated into new product development. We explain
how to identify and access online communities and how to interact with its members in order to get valuable input for new
product development. This approach we term “Community Based Innovation.” The Audi case illustrates the applicability of the
method and underscores the innovative capability of consumers encountered in virtual communities.
Businesses competing in the internet economy are turning their attention and resources towards increasing the retention of their customers and users. This paper examines how customer retention can be achieved and which strategy best fits which business model. The authors based their analysis on theoretical reasoning and interviews with B2C executives. Their findings differentiate the most appropriate strategies for particular business models. For example, building customer trust and convenience are the most appropriate for commerce-based businesses while the offer of free services are better suited to content, context and connection business models.
Many web designers approach the design of the graphic user interface on principles derived from either graphic design or usability, conceiving each web page as a static entity without regard for the user’s interactive activities and experiences. This research seeks to define some fundamental characteristics of design for the online user experience by looking to examples where online participation is both immersive and empowering for the user. This research draws on principles of co-creation from ‘Net art’ and the capacity of users in online communities to create alternative identities and experimental modes of being, it seeks to identify those characteristics that make online
experiences truly compelling, reconceptualising the relationship between user experience, interaction processes and design elements. The research contributes to the field of web design by offering a new conceptualisation of the user experience that escapes the current limitations of both graphic design (visual focused) and usability design (functional focused).
Finding commercially attractive user innovations: A test of lead-user theory
- N Franke
- E Von Hippel
- M Schreier
Time for e-commerce window dressing, highlighting brand value Derived from
- Artefact Group
Theorizing Web 2.0. Information, Communication and SocietyView Article
- F W Song
Weitreichende Veränderungen-Marketing im Web 2
- M Enderle
- B W Wirtz
Best intentions: A business model for the eEconomy
- J P Friedman
- T C Langlinais
- JP Friedman