A Longitudinal Study on the e-Business Models of Korea and U.S.

한국과 미국 e-비즈니스 모델의 종단적 비교 분석에 관한 연구

Understanding characteristics of Internet businesses from cross-cultural perspective could offer valuable insights on developing business strategy and policy. This work is concerned with revealing divergence and convergence of Internet business models in their financial performance, given organizational conditions and cultural context. For this, we studied the association between organizational attributes (core activity, origination, firm age, and industry) and their effects on a firm's financial performance (gross revenue and net income). Relevant data was gathered from representative Internet firms in Korea and U.S. Data analysis indicated that there exist both similarities and differences between Korea and U.S and year 2003 and 2006. While core activities and industry types of U.S. firms has not been changed much between the periods, Korean firms show much difference. In addition, while core activities and industry type were found to have strong relationship with financial performance, age and origination of a firm weak connections with financial performance. This study is expected to provide a foundation for developing more robust and systematic research model and performing further empirical research in this area.