Combining Critical Success Factors and Life Cycle Model to Enable Evaluation of e-business models

Electronic business models (e-business models) are a relatively new and growing research topic within Information Systems Science. The purpose of the paper is to combine critical success factors (CSFs) and life cycle model literature as ways to evaluate e-business models. The study draws empirical data from a survey among leading Finnish companies. In the survey, 104 respondents assessed 20 CSFs gathered from management literature as well as the importance of each CSF at different life cycle stages of an e-business model. Theoretically, the observations give evidence on the changing importance of various CSFs at different stages of an e-business model's life cycle. Primarily, the risk level and effectiveness of e-business model were recognized to distinguish CSFs in the life cycle model. In addition, the customer type (either B2B or B2C), the position in the value chain, and the service or product-orientation seem to affect which CSFs are essential at the various stages of e-business model's life cycle. Managerially, the different weightings of the importance of CSFs in the various stages of an e-business model's life cycle reflect the practical implications of the paper. The results also suggest that different CSFs are crucial at each stage of a life cycle. The results are likely to be useful for the venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in planning and making decisions regarding the long-term scenarios for ebusiness models.