[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

e-Business Strategies for Virtual Organizations
Figure 3.8
Virtual broker model
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than a cyberspace organization perceived as a virtual organization.
Amazon.com is a prime example of a market alliance
model where substitutability of links is very high. Fast and
responsive communication channels are essential to preserve
such alliances, which could only have formed occasionally, and
relied on duration to be cost effective hitherto.
An example of a market alliance model using Peapod – an
online retail grocery – is presented in Figure 3.7 and is later
referred to in section 3.4.7.
3.4.6 Virtual broker model
Virtual brokers are designers of dynamic networks. These
provide additional opportunities either as third party value
added suppliers such as in the case of common web marketing
events (e-Xmas) or as information brokers providing a virtual
structure around specific business information services. This has
the highest level of flexibility with purpose-built organizations
enduring to fill a window of opportunity and dissolving as that
window closes. New intermediaries using the Internet (such as
eBay and the many auction enterprises) epitomize the growing
trend to take fast and inexpensive communications across time
and space for granted and to configure themselves for advantage
accordingly. The case of Sofcom illustrates how a firm may
move to adopt this model as an effective response.
Sofcom (www.sofcom.com) is a Melbourne company acting as
an electronic intermediary, which provides, in addition to other
online content publishing, an online shopping mall for 4835
products in about 60 stores. Sofcom has an extensive online
infrastructure to support its product lines and to manage the
virtual faces of other businesses whose transactions pass
through Sofcom’s SSL secure server. The site offers an online
Store Builder TM facility for potential online storeowners. The
facility takes potential store owners step by step through the