Our paper investigates service functionality in the domain of B2B platform assimilation from the buyer’s perspective. Using a customer service life cycle framework, we identified five dimensions (information search, negotiation, acquisition, ownership, and retirement) of service functionality. We theorize that the importance of these dimensions is contingent upon current level of B2B platform assimilation. Using a two-staged field survey, we tested our theory on a sample of 191 professionals.
The results indicate that the importance of service functionality dimensions varies depending on the current level of service assimilation. Our results indicate that benefits and top management support enable future platform assimilation irrespective of the assimilation stage a firm is in currently. Assimilation costs were found to have negative impact on future platform assimilation among the companies who had a low level of current assimilation. However, the effect became non-significant for the companies with a higher level of current assimilation.
Our paper contributes to the theory development by (i) showing that the importance of different IT mediated services is contingent upon current level of assimilation; and (ii) showing which factors retain their importance throughout the assimilation stages. We describe management implications for B2B platform owners and buyer organizations.
You can find the full paper here.
Bibliometric information: Islam, A. N., Cenfetelli, R., & Benbasat, I. (2020). Organizational buyers’ assimilation of B2B platforms: Effects of IT-enabled service functionality. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 29(1), 101597.
