VALUE CREATION IN E-BUSINESS AS A DRIVER OF FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE: INVESTIGATING BUSINESS MODELS OF POLISH INTERNET COMPANIES

Abstract

The article presents the findings of a survey of managers of Polish internet companies investigating links between e-business value creation and financial performance. The theoretical framework was developed by Amit and Zott that conceptualized the main sources of value in internet-enabled companies. The study included 150 businesses with the largest representation of internet retailers and service providers. The major outcome of the study was developing logistic regression model that allowed to establish which variables were statistically significant predictors of the operational return on sales ratio. It implied that out of the four elements comprising Amit and Zott’s framework only Complementarities were closely linked with improved financial performance. The other two elements – Lock-in and Novelty – were not viable predictors, while the forth component – Efficiency – was negatively related to the performance metric.

Keywords

• business models
• value creation
• e-business
• e-commerce
• Internet