Strategic impact of e-business on an industry

Abstract

Porter`s five forces model has been used extensively to analyze industry competition and develop strategies in the traditional economy. The development of information technology has been argued to change the traditional economy to the information economy. E-business is built up over digital communication network and therefore, is subject to the information economy rather than the traditional economy. This thesis proposes an analytical methodology to analyze the strategic impact of E-business on an industry. For concreteness, this methodology is applied to examine it in Korea health care industry. The methodology includes a modified network competition model to determine the state of competition in the industry influenced by E-business and to develop E-business strategies so that a firm can enhance competitive advantages of E-business against other forces.