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Journal of Operations Management 29 (2011) 33–48

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Journal of Operations Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jom

Through the service operations strategy looking glass: Influence of industrial sector, ownership, and service offerings on B2B e-marketplace failures
Eve D. Rosenzweig a,∗ , Timothy M. Laseter b,1 , Aleda V. Roth c,2
ab c

The Goizueta Business School, Emory University, 1300 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322-2710, United States Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22906, United States College of Business and Behavioral Science, Clemson University, 124B Sirrine Hall, Clemson, SC 29634-1305, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f oa b s t r a c t
This paper contributes to the emerging area of e-service strategy in the context of business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces, which we view as Internet-based service delivery systems that link sellers’ offerings to buyers. Although a myriad of new B2B e-marketplaces were launched over the past decade, a substantial number failed shortly after the peak of the NASDAQ in 2000.The bursting of the Internet bubble provides a setting for assessing salient, theory-based determinants of failure—and success. Accordingly, we apply a service operations strategy lens and complementary organizational theories to explain how three strategic factors—industrial sector characteristics, ownership structure, and functionality of service offering—may have influenced B2B e-marketplaces’odds of survival after the bubble. We empirically test these factors using logistic regression analysis on a sample of 854 B2B e-marketplaces. Consistent with emerging e-services literature, our empirical results indicate that B2B e-marketplaces serving industrial sectors that are a better fit with the Internet service delivery systems—by high information dependence and low information tacitness—havethe highest likelihood of success, as do e-marketplaces with service offerings that facilitate collaboration among multiple buyers and sellers. We also demonstrate the positive influence of consortium ownership structure on B2B e-marketplace survival, albeit not for first-mover consortia-backed e-marketplaces. Our findings contribute to the service operations strategy literature and provide directionfor managers in the areas of e-service strategy and investment. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 2 January 2009 Received in revised form 15 April 2010 Accepted 20 April 2010 Available online 28 April 2010 Keywords: B2B e-commerce Service operations strategy e-Services Business failure Logistic regression analysis Internet service delivery systems

1.Introduction Over the past decade, business-to-business (B2B) emarketplaces have captured the imagination of practitioners and scholars alike. In this research, we characterize a B2B emarketplace as an Internet-based service delivery system that links sellers’ offerings to buyers. A myriad of these new B2B entities were launched as online platforms to facilitate commerce and trading amongInternet-linked businesses (Zhu, 2004). Unfortunately, a substantial number failed with the burst of the Internet bubble (Day et al., 2003; Laseter and Capers, 2002). When the NASDAQ index peaked at 5,132 on March 10, 2000, it stood more than 500% above its level on August 9, 1995, the day of the Netscape IPO. By September 23, 2002, the NASDAQ

closed at 1,185. The 18-month decline of stock prices resulted in$44.4 trillion of market value loss—including $1 trillion in Silicon Valley’s 150 largest companies. It was the largest stock market collapse in the history of industrial capitalism. (Goldfarb et al., 2005a, 1) Notably, although the 2008 economic meltdown has reached deeper into “Main Street,” the losses from the Internet market collapse destroyed far more shareholder wealth (Lepro, 2008)....