Revisiting Amit and Zott's model of value creation sources : The SymBelt Customer Center case

• Amit and Zott [2] recognized the importance of understanding value sources in electronic business (ebusiness).However, the concept of e-business is rather broad and therefore this paper suggests a more narrowfocus on the value of complementary services. The reason for this approach is an ever-increasing importancefor firms to provide complimentary services supporting products. Amit and Zotts [2] model of the sources ofvalue creation in e-business includes four dimensions of value creation; efficiency, lock-in, complementaritiesand novelty. In contrast to Amit and Zott [2], we suggest that the four dimensions of the model should not onlybe used as value creation sources, but moreover as value evaluation dimensions.The findings of this case study, where Metso Papers Internet-based service (a complementary service) andsome of their customers perceptions of the service have been studied, show that the customers have used theservices infrequently. This study also shows that in this specific business-to-business context, thecharacteristics of the product, which the Internet-based service supports, are vital. Therefore, we suggest amodification of Amit and Zotts [2] business model when used as a model for value evaluation of complementaryservices, to replace complementarities with nature of the core product.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Information Systems (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Internet-based service

value evaluation

value creation

Information Systems

Informatik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)