Strategic ´morphing´ and the survivability of e-commerce firms

This research develops an evolutionary game theory-motivated framework that helps academic researchers and industry practitioners to understand the "strategic morphing" of DotComs. Our framework applies an analogy from the theory of bio-diversity and genetic survivability in population ecology to different species in a highly competitive organic biome. In the e-commerce context, however, we emphasize survivability in terms of a set of characteristic categories and constructs that provide explanatory power for firm "strategic fitness" in competition with other firms and in the marketplace in general. We illustrate our framework using mini-case studies on DotCom success and failure.