Effects of electronic commerce models and industrial characteristics on firm performance

The rapid proliferation of the Internet has allowed many firms to use this new technology to run Web‐based electronic stores to expand their markets and to enhance the operational performance. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate why electronic commerce benefits some industries more than others, and what factors affect the impact of using e‐Stores on performance in different industries. This paper reports findings on the effect of industrial characteristics, as portrayed by product information content and information intensity of the value chain, and e‐commerce models on firm performance. The results indicate that both industrial characteristics and e‐commerce models have significant effects on firm performance. Among the industrial characteristics, information content of the product and information intensity of the value chain have been found to have a significant impact on firm performances.