Strategies for Leveraging IT-enabled Service Innovation in Intensively Competitive Market

Many studies have explored service innovations regarding the use of information technologies, yet few have addressed the strategic leveraging in IT investment for sustaining competitiveness. The objective of this paper is to examine different strategies that firms have applied in leveraging advanced information technologies for service innovation in highly competitive market. The analysis of strategy is developed based on two dimensions: (1) IT capability, referring to a firm’s ability to deploy IT-based resources, combined with (2) the firm’s complementary resources including customer and supplier relationships, financial capital. We investigate the convenience-store industry in Taiwan, where the intensity of convenience stores is ranked as the highest in the world and is observed to be in the intensive competitive market. The case analysis reveals that there are four types of strategies firms apply in leveraging IT for competitiveness: predator, inventor, follower, and hedger. Firms may apply multiple strategies toward different innovation initiatives.