One Size Fits All? The Dialectics Of Convergence And Divergence In Electronic Commerce

The wild days of Electronic Commerce appear to be over. The Web has matured to an established, widely accepted medium for business. Literature on Web development and design suggests that best practices have been identified. Large, highly visible companies like Amazon, eBay or Expedia appear to be setting standards in their respective business segments. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a still a high level of divergence on the consumer front end: socially accepted and acknowledged routines have not yet emerged and companies are changing their Web presence regularly. This raises the question, whether online customer front ends will become more similar or more different, whether convergence or divergence will be symptomatic for the further development of the domain. In order to understand the ambiguous situation, we are discussing drivers for either divergence or convergence on different conceptual levels of a commercial Web site. For purpose of illustration we will use examples from a range of industries.