The Evolution of Electronic Markets

Abstract

The term “paradigm” gained prominence after the original publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn in 1962 and has since been applied in multiple contexts, scientific and otherwise (Earman 1993, 19; McMullin 1993, 56ff.; Kuhn 1996). Information technology is consistent with this paradigm-shifting view of scientific revolution. Electronic commerce, the newest addition to the succession of information technology paradigms, grows progressively on an unprecedented scale. Momentous changes in the performance of deployed systems, the organizational structure, and the corporate value chain strongly influence this new paradigm (Beam and Segev 1996; Brandtweiner and Scharl 1999b, 8). The unprecedented success and rapid evolution of electronic commerce is not only grounded on the World Wide Web’s simple means for authoring documents and accessing its vast resources, but also in its effective support for a variety of communication models of diverse complexity. The evolution of mediated forms of communication rarely leads to their extinction. Unsurprisingly, computer-mediated environments such as the World Wide Web are no exception. However, whereas deployed systems and established communication models may not go into instant extinction, they will be radically transformed by the emergence of new technologies.