Ebook: Doing Business In A Digital World

Angela Hausman is currently an Assistant Professor of Marketing at theUniversity of Texas-Pan American. She holds a PhD from the Universityof South Florida and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. Herpublications span both consumer behavior and business-to-businessmarketing and have appeared in a number of scholarly journals,including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, IndustrialMarketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal ofServices Marketing, and Journal of Consumer Marketing. In addition,she has made presentations at national and international conferences,such as AMA, ACR, and AMS. She is currently working predominantly inthe areas of the internet, health care, and international marketing.I am very happy to have been asked to act as guest editor forthis special issue dealing with digital technologies in businessto-business markets. It was a pleasure to see the variety ofapproaches researchers are taking to understand factorsimpinging on the rapidly changing landscape of technology.The multi-national perspective provided by these researchersmakes this issue particularly valuable. I am confident theirfindings will provide guidance for industrial firms as theymove forward.The first set of articles in this series dealt with utilization ofinformation technology by firms as both a marketing tool anda means to manage their supply chains effectively. The first,by Dr George Day and Ms. Katrina Bens, reports the valuebusiness-to-business firms find in using the Internet to helpachieve their goals. Not only have firms been able to avoidadverse consequences, such as channel conflict, they haveseen the Internet help them leverage existing competencies.Echoing this, Drs Kim, Cavusgil, and Calantone discuss thebenefits information technology has on firm performancewithin the context of supply chain relationships. Drs Myhr and Spekman then discuss the role of electroniccommunication in mediating supply chain relationships tocreate value for the chain. The article by Dr Tina Harrisonand Ms Kathryn Waite looks at adoption of websitetechnology within a supply chain context. Combining bothqualitative and quantitative approaches, the study providesguidance for firms in their efforts to increase the use ofwebsites by financial services supply chains. The final paper inthis section was written by Drs Hausman and Johnston, andMr Oyedele. This paper looks at coordination between firmsin a network using the adoption of inter-organizationalsystems, such as electronic data interchange, as an exemplar.The next set of articles looks at different digital technologiesand explores how these technologies have been used to improvefirm effectiveness. Drs Houldsworth and Alexander explore therole digital communication plays in facilitating collaborationbetween virtual teams. Drawing on the learning literature, thestudy takes a qualitative approach with the interesting findingthat teams prefer face-to-face encounters over those that areelectronically mediated. Dr Ng next provides tools for selectinge-business models in the context of Australian agribusinesses.The use of decision support systems in business-to-businessmarkets was the topic of the study by Drs Noori and Salimi.This study integrates the important areas of decision supportsystems with customer relationship management. Thisdovetails well with the paper written by Drs Payton andZahay. Their study also explores customer relationshipmanagement from the perspective of identifying factorscontributing to its under-utilization by the marketing groupdespite frequent use of the data warehouse by finance andother functional groups. The final paper, by Dr Tim Foster,looks at the use of extranets to create value for business-tobusinessfirms. The primary driver of value in this context isnot only the value taken out by the firms, but the value put intothe extranet by member firms.In sum, these articles provide both theoretical and practicalperspectives on the use and utility of various digitaltechnologies in creating business value. I hope you find thearticles as insightful and useful as I did. Angela Hausman Previously published in: Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Volume 20, Number 4/5, 2005