The e-Visibility Maturity Model: Assessing stages of visibility evolution for e-business

This paper suggests a model to measure e-visibility - the e-Visibility Maturity Model (e-VM model) that is used to assess the visibility of a company or set of companies in the global e-business market. The visibility is measured using company´s involvement in electronic interactions with customers that is externalized by the integration of the Social Software (SoS) in its other means of online presence. This approach allows evaluating company´s adaptation to the challenges of the social web and scaling the evaluation to industry or country level. The evaluation of the maturity can be completed based on external presentation, i.e., the website, of the company allowing an efficient evaluation process. The suggested maturity model for assessing e-visibility is based on related work in the area of maturity assessment in e-business. Its application is illustrated in a case where the e-VM for specific countries across industries is assessed, based on a sample of 1600 enterprises from four countries.