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School of Business, Renmin University, 59 Zhong Guan Cun Avenue, Beijing 100872, PR China
DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Canada L8S 4M4
a r t i c l e
i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 30 April 2010
Received in revised form 1 July 2011
Accepted 1 July 2011
Available online 14 July 2011
This research is a study of factors leading to the success of business-to-business (B2B) electronic marketplaces (EMs). A model based on both organizational capability and market opportunity theories was
developed to explain the performance of B2B EMs. Organizational capabilities included service provision
capability and its enabling capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation and human resource capability,
whereas market opportunity was modeled as market size and e-commerce awareness of the industry.
Data were collected from 128 B2B EMs in China and analyzed using Partial Least Squares. Results suggest
that the research model explains the performance of B2B EMs well. More specically, among the two service capabilities studied, service width contributes signicantly to EM performance, while the effects of
service depth are yet to be seen. Moreover, the enabling organizational capabilities and market opportunity factors affect EM performance both directly and indirectly through their enhancement of EM service
provision capability.
2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
B2B electronic marketplaces
Organizational capability
Market opportunity
Service capability
1. Introduction
This research is a study of the performance of business-tobusiness (B2B) electronic marketplaces. B2B e-markets are Internet-based business syste-markets that support transactions and
other interactions between companies. E-markets aggregate many
buyers and sellers in one platform by facilitating product search,
contract negotiation, and transaction fulllment among participating rms. Many e-markets also provide value added services such
as industry news and intelligence, supplier evaluation, feedback
mechanisms, and consultations (Bakos 1998, Choudhury and
Hartzel 1998, Christiaanse 2005, Grewal et al. 2010, Holzmuller
and Schluchter 2002, Pavlou 2002). E-markets are normally classied into three types: independent e-markets that are operated by a
third party, consortium-based e-markets formed by groups of
industry players, and private e-markets owned by single companies in order to support their own transaction and supply chain
management (Dai and Kauffman 2002a,b). This research focuses
on the rst type: independent third party e-markets.
The performance of third party B2B e-markets is of great interest to both entrepreneurs and researchers due to the innovativeness of their business models and the large potential of the B2B
market. However, despite the benets that B2B e-markets can
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 82504648.
E-mail addresses: shanwang@ruc.edu.cn
(J.-Y. Mao), archer@mcmaster.ca (N. Archer).
1
Tel.: +1 905 525 9140x23944.
(S.
Wang),
jymao@ruc.edu.cn
1567-4223/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2011.07.001
60
61
Ordanini (2006)
Clasen and
Mueller (2006)
Dependent variables
Industry concentration
Revenue
Offering EDI
Start-up rms or attached to a conventional
brick-and-mortar rm
Age (+)
Trading agriculture machinery (+)
Informational benets
Transactional benets (+)
Relational benets ( )
Market focus (horizontal vs. vertical)
(Horizontal +)
Time online (+)
Resource endowment (afliation with existing
industry players) (+)
IT vendor-operated e-market
a
b
Exchange trafc
Wiklund and Shepherd 2005, Zahra and Covin 1995). Enterpreneurial orientation is especially important for e-markets operating
in an uncertain market due to the need for ongoing new opportunity discovery and exploitation, and new capability building.
To date, little effort has been made to examine the organizational capabilities of third party B2B e-markets. Weill and Vitale
(2002) distinguished e-commerce capabilities among nine types
of business models, including intermediaries that aggregate buyers
and sellers. They suggested that capabilities possessed by an intermediary should include application infrastructure, communication,
database management, and IT management, and emphasized that
such a business model demands higher levels of IT infrastructure.
In this research, we incorporate into our model two dynamic organizational capabilities: human resource capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation, and service provision capabilities that reect
the characteristics of B2B e-markets as service providers.
2.3. Theory of market opportunity
The research domain of market opportunity makes entrepreneurial research stand out as a separate eld from other strategic
management research streams, because entrepreneurship is about
the discovery and exploitation of market opportunities (Shane and
Venkataraman 2000, Short et al. 2010, Venkataraman 1997). Entrepreneurial ability to discover and exploit market opportunities is
positively related to the success of entrepreneurial rms (Gruber
et al. 2008). Market opportunities are dened as those situations
in which new goods, services, raw materials, and organizing methods can be introduced and sold at greater than their cost of production (Casson 1982). They include both the discovery of new
products and services or new usage of products, and the feasibility
62
of starting new businesses (Gruber et al. 2008). This denition suggests that new products and services are the physical embodiment
of business opportunities.
To date, the literature has concentrated on making sense of the
opportunity construct (Buenstorf 2007, McMullen et al. 2007). It
has focused on the type and nature of opportunities, by categorizing opportunities into three types: (1) creation of new information,
as with the invention of new technologies, (2) exploitation of market inefciencies that result from information asymmetry across
time and geography, and (3) reaction to shifts in the relative costs
and benets of alternative uses for resources, such as political, regulatory, or demographic changes (Drucker 1985, Eckhardt and
Shane 2003).
The nature of opportunity discovery and exploitation is also an
interesting topic. Two views emerge from this research stream.
One implicitly treats opportunity discovery and exploitation as
the launch of a new business, which is a one-time event. The other
research stream, mainly evolutionary economics, suggests that
opportunity discovery and creation is a continuous social process,
in which organizational development and evolution of industries
can be sources of opportunity discovery (Buenstorf 2007). In this
research, we adopt the latter view.
The value and signicance of opportunities has been ignored in
the literature. The limited literature suggests that the value of
opportunity can be contingent on favorable industry and market
environment factors, the substance of which includes high consumer demand (Choi and Shepherd 2004), and a product market
in the growth stage rather than emergent and mature stage
(Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven 1990). In this research, we focus
on external market factors as determinants of opportunity value.
3. The success of B2B e-markets: a model and hypotheses
A research model based on both organizational capability and
market opportunity perspectives was developed to explain the
success of B2B e-markets. (See Fig. 1.)
The two perspectives are not isolated from each other. First, the
evolutionary perspective of market opportunities suggests that the
activities and development of existing organizations are themarketselves sources of new market opportunity creation and
discovery (Buenstorf 2007). Therefore, services developed by an
e-market are a reection of the continuous capture and exploitation of emergent opportunities. Second, a focus on organizational
capability allows us to understand how opportunities are exploited
as service provision and its related driving forces.
Service depth is another dimension of e-market service provision capability. The use of in-depth service demands higher
involvement from participant companies and this enhances an
e-markets ability to charge higher service fees. The evolution of
B2B e-markets mostly follows three stages: from simply supporting aggregation, to supporting transactions, and then to supporting
integration and collaboration (Ganesh 2004), from the simplest
service to the most in-depth functions.
We propose that service depth contributes positively to
e-market performance because it adds more sources of revenue
for e-markets. Moreover, the revenue from more in-depth service
is likely to be higher than that from supporting simple aggregation
and information provision for the following two reasons. First,
customer transaction cost savings related to online payment,
logistics, and supply chain management are higher than savings
from simple information search. Second, the more depth there is
63
64
more service provision ideas can be generated and exploited by emarkets. This can increase both service width and depth. Thus we
propose:
Hypothesis 8a (The Market Size and e-Market Service Width
Hypothesis). E-market market size is positively related to e-market
service width
Hypothesis 8b (The Market Size and e-Market Service Depth
Hypothesis). E-market market size is positively related to e-market
service depth
3.2.2. E-commerce awareness
E-commerce awareness pertains to a client companys knowledge of e-commerce and its applications. A company with higher
e-commerce awareness is more likely to use e-markets for procurement and marketing. B2B e-market services also mean business opportunities to reduce transaction costs and extend
markets further aeld. Firms with high e-commerce awareness
are more likely to recognize the value of B2B e-market services,
to have developed a tendency to use e-commerce applications
(i.e., technological opportunism) (Mishra and Agarwal 2010,
Srinivasan et al. 2002), and to have higher acceptance of B2B
e-market services (Truong 2008). By targeting such clients, B2B
e-markets can attract more clients for their services. This may
lower the cost of customer acquisition and enhance opportunity
value appropriability due to having customers with a higher
willingness to pay. As a result, we propose:
Hypothesis 9 (The e-Commerce Awareness and e-Markets
Performance Hypothesis). The e-commerce awareness of the industry is positively related to B2B e-market performance
Cooperation from high acceptance customers also enlarges the
network of B2B e-market operators that are available for new
opportunity search, enabling them to develop more services
(Choi and Shepherd 2004, Shepherd and DeTienne 2005). Therefore, we suggest that an industry with higher e-commerce awareness enables B2B e-markets to discover more services, which may
contribute to the service capability of e-markets. Based on this
argument, we propose:
Hypothesis 10a (The e-Commerce Awareness and Service Width
Hypothesis). Industry e-commerce awareness is positively related to
the service width of an e-market
Hypothesis 10b (The e-Commerce Awareness and Service Depth
Hypothesis). Industry e-commerce awareness is negatively related
to the service depth of an e-market
4. Research methods
4.1. Measurement
The instruments used for data collection are described as follows, and shown in the Appendix:
Entrepreneurial orientation (EO). This was measured by four
ite-markets indicating a rms innovativeness, willingness to
collaborate, and growth orientation. The original eight-item
instrument was developed by Miller (1983), and validated by
other researchers (Covin and Slevin 1989, Ferreira and Azevedo
2007, Merz et al. 1994). We followed Ferreira and Azevedo
(2007) and used four of these ite-markets to measure this construct as a one-dimensional construct.
Human resource capability (HRC) was measured by four ite-markets indicating marketing knowledge, productivity, efciency,
and commitment to the company. The ite-markets were
adapted from Wiklund and Shepherd (2003).
Service depth (SD) was measured by an e-markets capability to
support transactions. This treatment is empirically necessary
and sound. In China, very few e-markets have started to support
integration and collaboration between companies, while some
support transactions and almost all support aggregation.2
If we used integration and collaboration supporting capability
as surrogates for service depth, there would be almost no companies in the sample. Second, even in western countries, empirical research shows that offering sophisticated features such as
CPFR and web-based EDI has not contributed to the performance of B2B e-markets (Clasen and Mueller 2006, Gosain
and Palmer 2004). Therefore, using transaction support as a surrogate of service depth is less likely to invalidate our major
argument that service depth is positively related to e-market
performance. Three ite-markets adapted from Zhuang and
Lederer (2006) were used to measure this capability.
These three constructs, service depth, human resource capability, and entrepreneurial orientation, were measured as reective
scales in the seven point Likert style, following their original
sources:
Service width (SW) was measured by the number of services that
an e-market provides. Nineteen services were identied from
previous research (Dai and Kauffman 2002a,b; Hopkins and
Kehoe 2007) and from interviews with industry informants.
Respondents were asked to indicate what services they offered,
and the construct was measured by the sum of the number of
these services.
Market size (Msize) was assessed by the annual total sales volume of the industry in which the e-market operated, segmented
into intervals of seven levels ranging from RMB5 million (about
US$0.67 million) to RMB1 billion (about US$133 million) and
above.
E-commerce awareness (EA) was measured by a single item, an
e-market operators estimate of the extent to which companies
in the industry that it served were aware of e-commerce. It was
measured by a ve-point Likert scale ranging from very low to
very high.
4.1.1. E-market performance
Specifying a suitable measure for e-market performance (PER)
was a challenge because most e-markets were still in their early
life cycles. They needed to strategically balance between extending
the size of their operations while sacricing prot, and pocketing
prot in their early life cycle while maintaining a restrained size
of operation. Three types of measures were identied from the literature: (1) the number of participating companies, (2) technical
measurements of e-market performance such as network trafc,
the number of page views per visitor session, and the number of
in-links (the number of other Web pages that link to this particular
website) obtained from a search engine www.Alexa.com, and (3)
nancial indicators, such as break-even in net prot before tax, positive operating cash ow on a quarterly basis, and revenue. These
were considered more direct and accurate measures of e-market
performance. Among all the nancial indicators, revenue was
2
As shown in Fig. 2 in the data analysis section, only 9.8% of the companies
supported system integration among companies, and their websites revealed that
most of them provided it as a software service, rather than as a hosting service.
65
highly recommended since it measured how large the business entity had become. It gave a sense of how well the entity had survived and its prospects for the future, and it was also more likely
to be revealed by respondents than more proprietary measures.
Last, it is a measure gainfully used by other researchers (Laseter
and Bodily 2004).
We used the number of companies participating in the e-market (including both registered members (PERM) and paying members (PERPM)), and nancial indicators including prot (PERP) and
revenue (PERR) as performance measurements. Technical measurements were not considered due to their inaccuracy. Since the number of members, revenue, and prot were different dimensions of
e-market performance, they were treated as formative indicators.
4.1.2. Control variables
We included several variables used in prior research as control
variables:
Organization size (Size) was measured by the number of
employees.
Organization age (Age) (in years) captured learning effects and
the early mover advantage of e-markets.
Type of e-market (WT) measured whether an e-market was a
comprehensive or an industrial e-market (coded as 1 or 0,
respectively). Organizational age, size and type (comprehensive
e-markets) were expected to positively correlate with
performance.
Regional e-commerce maturity (REM), was assessed using the
regional net entrepreneur development index produced by Alibaba (Aliresearch 2010). This comprehensive index included sixteen ite-markets covering many aspects of e-commerce
development in each province of China, including size, activeness of online vendors (net entrepreneurs), and e-commerce
service and infrastructure development in each region.
Industry structure (IS) Industry structure measured whether the
industry targeted by the e-market was concentrated or fragmented (coded as 1 or 0).
Targeted client size (Csize): The size of major targeted customers,
measured by a ve-level interval scale of revenue. e-markets
targeting larger clients are likely to generate more revenue.
were then further adjusted. For example, one item, SD3, was deleted from the service depth measure due to its low reliability.
The nal questionnaire, as presented in the Appendix, was
administered to a list of 524 Chinese B2B e-markets, provided by
the well-known Chinese e-commerce media company, Ebrun. The
questionnaire was posted on a website, and emails sent to all of
the contacts to invite their participation, requesting that the survey
be completed by a manager familiar with e-market operations.
Only 36 companies completed the questionnaire within one week
as a result of the rst email contact. Follow-up telephone calls
were made twice to the rest of the e-markets to urge them to complete it. To motivate subjects, a ticket to a SME conference hosted
by eBrun was awarded to those who completed the questionnaire.
Altogether, 145 of the 524 B2B e-markets completed it. The websites of participating companies were then checked, and fteen
companies that did not t our specications were deleted from
the survey, for example, those that supported B2C transactions or
were an afliate website of a major B2B company.
Table 2
Proles of responding e-markets.
Frequency
Percent
Position of respondent
Owner or CEO
Senior manager
Department manager
Other employee
Total
36
51
32
9
128
28.13
39.84
25.00
7.03
100.00
Industry
Multiple industries
Machinery
Energy and electricity
Others
Total
28
17
10
73
128
21.88
13.28
7.81
57.03
100.00
020
2150
51100
101500
Total
36
31
32
29
128
28.13
24.22
25.00
22.66
100.00
12
34
56
714
Total
38
37
25
28
128
29.69
28.91
19.53
21.88
100
01 million
13 million
35 million
510 million
1030 million
3050 million
50100 million
Total
46
31
19
14
10
5
3
128
35.94
24.22
14.84
10.94
7.81
3.91
2.34
100.00
0100,000
110,000500,000
500,0001 million
15 million
510 million
1050 million
Total
40
36
16
28
3
5
128
31.25
28.13
12.50
21.88
2.34
3.91
100.00
3003000
300110,000
10,00150,000
50,001100,000
100,000 and above
Total
24
19
33
13
39
128
18.75
14.84
25.78
10.16
30.47
100.00
1001000
10015000
500110,000
10,00130,000
30,00150,000
50,000 and above
Total
80
30
9
4
3
2
128
62.50
23.44
7.03
3.13
2.34
1.56
100.00
66
Outlier checks were further performed using Mahanalobis distance (Tabachnik and Fidell 2001). Two cases had exceptionally
high Mahanalobis distance values, and were checked by calling
the company respondents and double-checking with other experts.
The two cases were found to be abnormal and therefore removed.
The nal count was 128 valid questionnaires, for a response rate of
24%.
To check non-response bias, t-tests were performed on the basic
variables listed in Table 2, to see whether there were signicant
differences between the initial 36 responses and the rest after
incentives were offered. There were no signicant differences between the two groups. Additionally, because not all companies in
the sample frame provided all the basic information required, additional information was retrieved on two variables for each e-market from Alex.com: Alex website trafc ranks and number of inlinks. Two t-tests were conducted to see whether the sampled
companies differed from other companies in the sample frame.
The test results showed that the two groups were not signicantly
different.
5. Data analysis and results
5.1. Descriptive statistics
Table 2 also shows basic information about the responding emarkets. In the survey, 77% of the e-markets were small companies
with fewer than 100 employees, and 78% had existed less than seven years. Furthermore, 86% had annual revenue less than RMB10
million (US$1.5 million). This threshold is called the growth ceiling, which was very hard to surpass, according to practitioners
whom we interviewed. Although Chinese B2B e-markets have large
numbers of registered users (more than 100,000), 86% of the surveyed e-markets had fewer than 5000 fee-paying members. They
paid various fees, such as subscription and advertisement fees.
Fig. 2 shows four types of services provided by the e-markets
surveyed. Supplier directories and product catalogues, web store
hosting, advertisements, and industry news were the most
frequently provided services, and can be considered the basic services for e-markets operating in China. Website building, purchasing and selling-related consulting services, and industry analysis
reports were among the next tier of popular services. Only 17%
of the e-markets support online payments, which is considered
to be a key and in-depth functionality in supporting online transactions. Table 3 shows the correlation coefcients among the variables studied.
5.2. Measurement model
Three latent variables with reective indicators: service depth
(SD), human resource capability (HRC), and entrepreneurial orientation (EO), were validated in terms of convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability.
5.2.1. Convergent validity
This ensures that all ite-markets measure a single underlying
construct (Bagozzi and Fornell 1982). Two decision criteria were
proposed by Straub et al. (2004). First, in principal component
analysis (PCA), the loading of each indicator should be at least
0.4, and ite-markets that do not load properly should be dropped
from the instrument. Table 4 shows the results of the PCA test.
One item, EO4, due to its high loading on a fourth factor that was
hard to explain, was dropped.
Second, indicators should pass the conrmatory factor analysis
(CFA) test used in structural equation modeling. Major t indexes
should pass the respective criteria, with an item loading higher
than 0.707, so that half of the variance is captured by the latent
construct. In this research we ran a CFA test with LISREL software
(version 8.7). Tables 5 and 6 show the results of the CFA test after
EO4 was removed, and all indicators met the above-mentioned
criteria.
5.2.2. Discriminant validity
This was assessed in the following three ways: (1) As shown in
Table 4, no cross loadings in the PCA test exceeded the criteria of
System integration
Firm internal IT services
Building company database
Website building
Building forum and community
Financial services
Sales and procurement
Evaluation services
Auctions or tendering services
Logistics
Online payment
Online management
Commodity exchange
Advertising
Consulting services
Industry analysis report
Industry news
Web store hosting
Supplier directory and product catalogue
%
0.00
%
%
00.01 00.02
%
%
%
00.03 00.04 00.05
%
%
%
00.06 00.07 00.08
%
00.09
67
Size
Age
REM
Csize
PERPM
PERM
PERP
PERR
EA
Msize
SW
SD
EO
HRC
WTa
ISa
*
**
a
b
Mean
Std dev
Size
Age
68.84
4.52
1.18
1.64
1.64
3.19
2.48
2.52
2.72
3.62
7.08
5.19
6.01
5.72
0.22
10.29
240.18
2.94
0.41
0.97
1.08
1.48
1.39
1.62
1.02
1.73
3.05
1.33
1.15
1.07
0.42
8.97
1
.235**
0.014
0.125
.493**
.231**
.301**
.314**
0.15
0.129
.180*
0.116
0.024
0.067
REM
CSize
PERPM
PERM
PERP
PERR
EA
Msize
SW
SDb
EOb
HRCb
1
0.125
0.053
0.049
0.098
0.027
0.063
0.071
0.119
0.054
0
0.023
1
.192*
.206*
.425**
.400**
0.143
0.126
0.065
0.17
0.096
0.16
1
.412**
.551**
.600**
.351**
.274**
0.124
0.104
0.025
0.173
1
.452**
.406**
0.147
.292**
.317**
0.058
0.077
.250**
1
.828**
.221*
.396**
.303**
0.17
0.035
.222*
1
.294**
.383**
.260**
.192*
0.023
.214*
1
0.163
.198*
0.141
0.056
.177*
1
.191*
0.137
0.075
0.08
1
.197*
.229**
.300**
1
.433**
.269**
1
.527**
1
.257**
.267**
.382**
.416**
.374**
.442**
0.064
0.11
0.002
0.124
0.065
0.117
Table 4
Properties of the PCA for reective constructs.
Table 6
Goodness of t indices for the revised measurement model.
Component
HRC
HRC1
HRC2
HRC3
HRC4
EO1
EO2
EO3
EO4
SD1
SD2
EO
0.80
0.88
0.88
0.86
0.30
0.20
0.27
0.11
0.08
0.14
0.21
0.29
0.10
0.31
0.89
0.82
0.86
0.04
0.21
0.20
SD
0.01
0.12
0.12
0.12
0.15
0.21
0.21
0.05
0.94
0.93
4
0.15
0.10
0.10
0.12
0.06
0.24
0.06
0.98
0.02
0.05
The numbers are made bold in table 4 to indicate that these numbers are higher
than the threshhold value 0.5, and the items corresponding to these numbers
belong to the same factor.
Goodness of t indices
Revised model
Criteria
v2 (d.f.)
40.93
24
1.71
0.035
0.068
0.97
0.99
0.94
0.88
3
9
Smallera
d.f.
v2/d.f.
Standardized RMR
RMSEA
NFI
CFI
GFI
AGFI
Number of latent variables
Total number of ite-markets
a
<3.0
<0.05
0.050.08
>0.9
>0.9
>0.9
>0.8
Table 7
Assessment of discriminant validity: condence interval and AVE test.a,b
Table 5
Properties of the CFA for Constructs.
HRC
Standardized
parameter estimate
t-value
HRC
HRC1
HRC2
HRC3
HRC4
0.81
1.06
1.05
1.19
10.03
13.99
10.61
13.29
EO
EO1
EO2
EO3
1.17
1
1.13
13.76
10.41
12.51
SD
SD1
SD2
1.25
1.3
10.87
11.45
0.4, thus the retained constructs meet the rst criteria of discriminant validity. (2) As per Fornell and Larcker (1981), the correlations between ite-markets in any two constructs should be lower
than the square root of the average variance shared by ite-markets
within a construct. As shown in Table 7, Fornell and Larkers criteria were met. (3) The condence interval test to assess discriminant validity between two factors involved calculating a
condence interval of plus or minus two standard errors around
the correlation between the factors, and determining whether this
interval included 1. If it does not include 1, discriminant validity is
HRC
EO
SD
EO
0.89
0.59
(0.47, 0.71)
0.31
(0.13, 0.49)
SD
0.89
0.44
(0.28, 0.6)
0.96
a
The square root of the variance shared between a construct and its ite-markets
is in the diagonal of the matrix.
b
The correlations and their condence intervals are reported by LISREL. The
correlation numbers may not correspond to Table 3, which was calculated in SPSS
using the average value of ite-markets.
HRC
EO
SD
Cronbachs a
Composite reliability
AVE
0.91
0.90
0.93
0.94
0.92
0.96
0.80
0.79
0.93
68
mixed evidence suggested that we should be careful in data analysis and interpretation. Therefore, we present PLS results using
either all four ite-markets or prot only to measure PER.
PLS, as implemented in SMART PLS Version 2.0, was used primarily for the following two reasons: (1) Compared with structural
equation modeling as implemented in LISREL, whose primary
emphasis is on overall model t, PLS is a more exploratory, datadriven, and prediction-oriented method. PLS ts the purpose of this
research better than LISREL since the goal of our research is to
predict e-market performance. (2) PLS allows for both reective
and formative scales to be modeled.
We performed four PLS analyses. In Model 1, both independent
and control variables were regressed on a composite performance
measure of e-market performance (PER). In Model 2, we excluded
the control variables to see how much variation the main constructs explained. Because prot did not load properly on PER as
indicated by Model 1, and exhibited multicollinearity with item
PERR, we performed two separate tests, using prot (Model 4)
and PER with the remaining three ite-markets (Model 3) as the
dependent variables.
The results of the PLS analysis of Model 1 are shown in Fig. 3
and Table 9. This model includes all predictors and explains 59%
of the variance in e-market performance.
Within the two dimensions of service capability, service width
(SW) has a signicant effect on e-market performance. The coefcient for SW is 0.15 and the t-value is 2.25 (p < 0.05). However, service depth (SD) is not signicantly correlated with e-market
performance. Its coefcient is negative at 0.04 but not signicant.
Therefore, the Service Width and e-Market Performance Hypothesis (H1) is supported, whereas the Service Depth and e-Market Performance Hypothesis (H2) is not.
The hypothesized direct effect of human resource capability
(HRC) (the Human Resources Capabilities and e-Market Performance Hypothesis, H3) on e-market performance is supported.
HRC is a signicant predictor of e-market performance (p < 0.05).
However, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is negatively related to
e-market performance, but the coefcient is not signicant. Therefore, the Entrepreneurial Orientation and e-Market Performance
(H5) is not supported.
The hypothesized effects of HRC (the Human Resources Capabilities and Service Width/Depth Hypotheses, H4a/H4b) and EO (the
e-Market Entrepreneurial Orientation and Service Width/Depth
Hypotheses, H6a/H6b) on service capability received mixed evidence. First, both HRC and EO contribute signicantly to service
width. The coefcients for HRC and EO are 0.21, and 0.1, and the
t-values of these coefcients are 1.93 (very close to the critical value of 1.96 for p < 0.05), and 3.79 (p < 0.01). Second, HRC is not a
signicant explanatory factor of SD, while EO is. The coefcients
for HRC and EO are 0.03 and 0.4, and the t-values of these coefcients are 0.49 and 3.98 (p < 0.01).
The hypothesized direct effects of market opportunity on
e-market performance are supported. The size of potential B2B
service market (Msize) and e-commerce awareness (EA) are significant predictors of e-market performance, as hypothesized in the
Market Size and e-Market Performance Hypothesis (H7) and
the e-Commerce Awareness and e-Market Performance Hypothesis
(H9). The coefcients for Msize and EA are 0.26 and 0.12, and the
t-values of these coefcients are 6.4 (p < 0.01) and 2.21 (p < 0.05).
The Market Size and e-Market Service Width/Depth Hypotheses
(H8a/H8b) and the e-Commerce Awareness e and e-Market Service
Width/Depth Hypotheses (H10a/H10b) predict positive relationships among Msize, EA and service provision capabilities. The
69
Table 9
Path Coefcients of PLS Results.
Model 1
Weights
EO
HRC
SW
SD
Msize
EA
REM
WT
Csize
IS
Size
Age
R2
Model 2
t-value
0.01
0.10**
0.15**
0.04
0.26***
0.12**
0.10**
0.12**
0.23**
0.08
0.17
0.42***
0.59
0.19***
0.24***
0.19**
0.08
0.35***
0.15**
3.18
4.4
2.26
1.28
6.22
2.03
0.58
0.44
0.22
2.53
2.25
1.02
6.4
2.21
2.41
2.62
3.19
1.34
1.52
7.7
0.32
0.1
0.40***
0.03
0.09
0.21
Sub-DV: SD
1.64
3.98
0.49
1.5
0.21
0.1
0.40***
0.03
0.09
0.21
1.95
1.93
3.79
2.59
0.13**
0.10
0.21***
0.15**
0.14
Sub-DV: SW
EA
EO
HRC
Msize
R2
**
***
Model 3
t-value
Sub-DV: SD
EA
EO
HRC
Msize
R2
Weights
0.13
0.10
0.21***
0.15**
0.14
Weights
Model 4
t-value
0.01
0.10**
0.14**
0.04
0.25***
0.13**
0.11**
0.13**
0.21***
0.07
0.17
0.43***
0.02
0.07
0.18**
0.02
0.27***
0.04
0.01
0.05
0.36***
0.12**
0.12
0.24***
0.24
2.49
2.18
0.95
6.00
2.55
2.72
2.68
3.38
1.26
1.62
8.39
Sub-DV: SD
1.58
3.72
0.46
1.42
0.21
0.1
0.40***
0.03
0.09
2.01
1.95
3.72
2.59
0.13**
0.10
0.21***
0.15**
0.14
Sub-DV: SW
Weights
t-value
0.35
1.47
2.85
0.37
4.82
0.6
0.48
0.72
6.61
2.31
1.3
3.82
Sub-DV: SD
1.62
3.75
0.49
1.43
0.1
0.40***
0.03
0.09
2.13
1.95
3.73
2.70
0.13**
0.10
0.21***
0.15**
0.14
Sub-DV: SW
1.55
4.07
0.5
1.41
Sub-DV: SW
2.08
1.91
3.74
2.44
70
Table 10
Summary of hypothesis testing results.
#
Hypotheses
Results
1
2
3
4a
4b
5
6a
6b
7
8a
8b
9
10a
10b
Supported
Not supported
Supported
Supported
Not supported
Not supported
Marginally supported
Supported
Supported
Supported
Not supported
Supported
Supported
Not supported
71
Acknowledgements
This research was supported partially by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under Grants 70902078 and
70888001, a Young Faculty fund from the Ministry of Education
of China (20090004120001), and Renmin University Survey
Research Foundation.
5 million-10 million
10.01 million -30 million
30.01million-50 million
50.01million-100 million
500.01million-1 billion
100.01million-500 million
1 billion and above
EO1:
EO2:
EO3:
EO4:
We
We
We
We
72
Commodity exchange
Order administration and analysis
Online payment
Product delivery and logistics
Auction or tendering services
Value added services:
Website building
Building company database
Company internal IT service (such as ERP, MRP and accounting
book system)
System integration between trading partners
A.7. Performance of e-markets (PER)
PEFR: The revenue of your company in 2008 was
________(RMB) .
01 million, 13 million, 35 million, 510 million, 1030 million, 3050 million, 50100 million, 100 million and above
PEFP: the prot of your company in 2008 was ________ (RMB)
0100,000, 100,000500,000, 500,0001million, 15 million,
510 million, 1050 million, 50 million and above
PEFM: the number of registered members in your website:
_____________
PEFPM: the number of fee paying members in your
website:________________
Control Variable:
Organizational size (SIZE)
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