In the e-Retail industry, a well-designed IT infrastructure is essential in creating a tightly integrated
value chain and delivering high quality service. With intense competition for market share and profits,
information systems and technology (IST) sourcing decisions are becoming increasingly important to e-
Retail firms to support continued growth and market responsiveness. Drawing on the contingency theory,
we examine organizational and environmental factors that influence an e-Retailer’s IST sourcing strategy
of make versus buy in enabling its value chain activities, and we also look at firm-level performance impacts
of IST sourcing decisions that involve bundling across value chain activities. We test the proposed model
and hypotheses using a panel data set of 307 firms over the period of 2006–2010. The results show
that firms that make transformative IT investments tend to source a smaller portion of IST for their e-
Retail value chain activities than firms that pursue automate or informate as their strategic role for IT
investment. Capabilities are positively associated with IST sourcing. Firms experienced in e-Retail are
more likely to build rather than buy their IST. In addition, we find mimicking behavior for IST sourcing
among firms in the same merchandizer category. We find that IT strategic role is strongly associated with
growth metric, whereas sourcing decisions predominantly impact operational performance measures.
There is partial evidence that alignment between IT strategic role and IST sourcing decisions results in
better performance effects. Moreover, complementary IST sourcing of synergistic marketing and sales
activities positively impacts Web sales and conversion rate, but the sourcing combination of logistics,
operations, and sales activities is associated with lower Web sales and conversion rate
In the e-Retail industry, a well-designed IT infrastructure is essential in creating a tightly integratedvalue chain and delivering high quality service. With intense competition for market share and profits,information systems and technology (IST) sourcing decisions are becoming increasingly important to e-Retail firms to support continued growth and market responsiveness. Drawing on the contingency theory,we examine organizational and environmental factors that influence an e-Retailer’s IST sourcing strategyof make versus buy in enabling its value chain activities, and we also look at firm-level performance impactsof IST sourcing decisions that involve bundling across value chain activities. We test the proposed modeland hypotheses using a panel data set of 307 firms over the period of 2006–2010. The results showthat firms that make transformative IT investments tend to source a smaller portion of IST for their e-Retail value chain activities than firms that pursue automate or informate as their strategic role for ITinvestment. Capabilities are positively associated with IST sourcing. Firms experienced in e-Retail aremore likely to build rather than buy their IST. In addition, we find mimicking behavior for IST sourcingamong firms in the same merchandizer category. We find that IT strategic role is strongly associated withgrowth metric, whereas sourcing decisions predominantly impact operational performance measures.There is partial evidence that alignment between IT strategic role and IST sourcing decisions results inbetter performance effects. Moreover, complementary IST sourcing of synergistic marketing and salesactivities positively impacts Web sales and conversion rate, but the sourcing combination of logistics,operations, and sales activities is associated with lower Web sales and conversion rate
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