A Customer Resource Life Cycle Interpretation of the Impact of the World Wide Web on Competitiveness: Expectations and Achievements

Research indicates that many organizations implement their World Wide Web sites so that they can compete more successfully. The Customer Resource life Cycle (CRlC) is a framework for explaining how organizations use information technology to do so. The current exploratory research investigated how smaller organizations plan to use the Web to improve their CRlC activities and thus enhance their competitiveness. It also investigated how successfully they use the Web in this endeavor. Managers from 472 companies that use Web sites to conduct business responded to an e-mail survey about the expectations and achievements of their Web sites in the context of the CRlC. They expected their Web sites to help customers acquire resources rather than to determine requirements for resources, whereas customers used the sites more for requirements determination than for acquisition. At the same time, the Web helped organizations compete in the manner expected to a great extent.