A Study Of Relationships Between Customer Service-oriented Inter/Intra-firm E-Business Capabilities And Performance

In the past two decades, with the widespread use of computer networks, the differentiation and degradation of consumers and the diversification of demand for products and services make more and more enterprises to begin doing customer service-oriented e-business activities. For example, http://home.dangdang.com/provides online trial, online after-sale and other e-business activities. Under this dynamic and complicate competitive environment, e-business activities play an important role in the carrying out of the outside business process. Through the Internet and Web, we can achieve information sharing and business process collaboration between enterprises and customers. This e-business ability based on the e-business process seems to be more important in the customer-oriented business environment. Therefore, the implementation ability of enterprise internal e-business and the implementation ability of customer service-oriented external business activities become a hot issue in the development of e-business.In academia, the IT value research focuses on two main areas:Information Systems (IS) field and supply chain management (SCM) field. Information Systems (IS) research focuses on the organizing the way of IT application as well as IT value they bring. Rajiv Kohli and Varun Grover (2008) pointed out that IT is changing the organizational structure and operating methods of the enterprises to make them undergone a tremendous creative change, corporate strategic decision making has already gone beyond the scope of thinking only of a single enterprise, the meaning of IT value expands to the network level, the early view from a single organization to understand the views of IT value is no longer applicable, based on the cooperation of IT to create value as an information system is one area of future research directions. Supply Chain Management (SCM) focuses on the application impact of IT to the business operation of the enterprise level, such as the improvement of operational capability because of using IT, and the impact of this improvement to the performance of enterprises (such as coordination), to improve the coordination and performance of supply chain partners by using IT. The current finding for the understanding and customer service-oriented IT research capacity creates a value basis, but there are serious limitations. Information Systems give no clear and specific process to IT value, IT investment and performance between the middle variable need further study; there are academic person in supply chain management field did research on the impact to enterprise performance of the ability based on the internal IT integration and external integration between enterprises, but few research on the relationship between enterprise e-business capabilities and the enterprise performance within the enterprise and customers, no consideration on the key customer factor. So under e-business environment, the ability on integration of internal resources and the online activities of customer service-oriented process become crucial to the research of the value of IT. Under E-business environment, how does the customer service-oriented e-commerce capabilities influence the formation of IT value? Research literature in this respect is few, so there us an urgent need to explore the mechanism of customer service-oriented e-business ability in creating IT value to guide the internal and external customer-facing e-business implementation.Based on the above research questions, this paper focuses on the relationship of capacity and performance of internal and external e-business, and explores the driving role which customer service-oriented firm e-business capabilities produce to IT value. Based on "e-business value creation process model", researched on the perspectives of e-business processes, combined enterprise resources and dynamic capabilities theory, thought firm e-business processes for the practical application, there is the "intra-firm and inter-firm e-business capabilities-value " relationship model. Analyze the relationship between internal and external e-business capabilities and e-business process performance, firm performance. Through the implementation of our 183 business using e-business service for large-scale surveys and interviews, after Processing the data which was got, Test and verify the model in the way of structural equation modeling of empirical research, and get the best model in the way of nested model. The result is:inter-firm e-business capabilities reflected in information sharing, customer relationship management and Web infrastructure level which are created by enterprise using internal IT resources. Intra-firm e-business capabilities is the ability of customer service-oriented online activities process, for example online trial, online sale and personalized service. By empirical research and analysis, there are the following major conclusions:1,Inter-firm e-business capabilities is basic of customer service-oriented intra-firm e-business capabilities. The result of research prove that the level of information, the condition of site's construction, the level of manage customer relationship directly affect purchase online, sell online and personalized service. Firstly sharing information and network infrastructure is prime factors. These can improve much activity online. The result shows that the enterprises should strengthen their own advantages firstly, and involve in a series of online activities actively, after their infrastructure is more complete. Enterprises should pay attention to the external customer-oriented capabilities established from inter-firm e-business capabilities. Through the establishment of intra-firm e-business process to get the customer service-oriented e-services capabilities.2,Inter-firm e-business capabilities not only improve the performance of electronic business process, but also improve the firm performance. Sharing information in organization, network information infrastructure and customer relationship management are basic factors of getting IT value and the key of enterprise business activities. Manager should improve the firm performance by using effective sharing information and network infrastructure.3,Intra-firm e-business capabilities can affect e-business process performance directly, but not firm performance. The findings of this paper confirms process view, reflects the features of customer service-oriented e-business activities, explains that the value of e-business should be Measure from the view of process, and results that e-business Process Performance is the effect of firm e-business activity. Service-oriented online activities, for example online trial, online sale and personalized service, can create value for customers.The main innovation:1,Clearly defined the concept of inter-firm e-business capabilities and intra-firm e-business capabilities. Proved that inter-firm e-business capabilities is the basis of customer service-oriented intra-firm e-business capabilities; Inter-firm e-business capabilities not only improve the performance of electronic business process, but also improve the firm performance; Inter-firm e-business capabilities can affect e-business process performance directly, but not firm performance. The finds let we know more complete understanding, deeper and more adapt to the development that IT ability create the value of IT. And provide a new theoretical perspective of "Co-create value with customers".2,Anglicizing intra-firm and inter-firm activity of electronic business from the view of process. Studies have shown that e-business process performance is the direct reflect of electronic business, confirmed the point of view that should be measured the value of e-business from the process point of view. Customer service-oriented intra-firm e-business capabilities directly create value for customers, thereby creating value for the enterprise. Discover and prove the important feature that inter-firm e-business capabilities based on inter-firm e-business ability and service-oriented intra-firm e-business capabilities from the view of process. This exploratory study extends the scope of e-business research, and has important guiding significance in practice for e-business.