Take, for example, cost structures. Constant fixed costs and zero marginal costs are common assumptions for textbook analysis, but are rarely observed for physical products since there are capacity constraints in nearly every production process. But for information goods, this sort of cost structure is very common-indeed it is the baseline case. This is true not just for pure information goods, but even for physical goods like chips. A chip fabrication plant can cost several billion dollars to construct and outfit; but producing an incremental chip only costs a few dollars. It is rare to find cost structures this extreme outside of technology and information industries.
The effects I will discuss involve pricing, switching costs, scale economies, transactions costs, system coordination, and contracting. Each of these topics has been extensively studied in the economics literature. I do not pretend to offer a complete survey of the relevant literature, but will focus on relatively recent material in order to present a snapshot of the state of the art of research in these areas.
I try to refer to particularly significant contributions and other more comprehensive surveys. The intent is to provide an overview of the issues for an economically literate, but non-specialist, audience.
For a step up in technical complexity, I can recommend the survey of network industries in the Journal of Economic Literature consisting of articles by Katz and Shapiro [1994], Besen and Farrell [1994], Leibowitz and Margolis [1990], and the books by Shy [2001] and Vulkan [2003]. Farrell and Klemperer [2003] contains a detailed survey of work involving switching costs and network effects with an extensive bibliography.
For a step down in technical complexity, but with much more emphasis on business strategy, I can recommend Shapiro and Varian [1998a], which contains many real-world examples.