Using the Internet for competitive advantage
| Pages | 139-142 |
| Date | 01 June 1997 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635579710173202 |
| Published date | 01 June 1997 |
| Author | Peter Jemmeson |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
[ 139 ]
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
97/4 [1997] 139–142
© MCB University Press
[ISSN 0263-5577]
Using the Internet for competitive advantage
Peter Jemmeson
Senior Lecturer, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK
Examines the possible use of
the Internet as a business
tool to gain competitive
advantage. After a brief
introduction to the Internet it
defines Internet driven com-
petitive advantage. Discusses
the most commonly used
Internet tools with relation to
practical examples of their
possible use as tools to gain a
competitive advantage. Con-
cludes that with the correct
approach there is potential
for successful use of the
Internet by business.
The aim of this article is to make you, the
reader, aware of the business opportunities
presented by the Internet and to show how
they could give your company a competitive
advantage. It will concentrate on the follow-
ing Internet tools and examine the opportuni-
ties presented by each:
• E-mail;
• Gopher and file transfer protocol (FTP);
• Telnet;
• Internet Relay Chat (IRC);
• World Wide Web (WWW or the Web).
But first I want to cover what the Internet is,
where it came from, and how it operates. The
Internet is a network of networks, that is
computer systems all over the world linked
together so that data can be passed between
them. The Internet is free to use and is not
owned by anybody. This may sound strange
but the closest analogy is with the world’s
road system. Nobody owns the entire system
just individual parts of it and the majority of
the road system is free to use. The same
applies to the Internet. The Internet started
out in the 1960s as an academic project to link
remote computers together. When this suc-
ceeded the resulting network grew as demand
grew. The US military then took over the
project because one effect of the work done
was to allow computers to automatically
choose the best route to send the data to the
remote computer. This meant that the system
would survive a nuclear attack which took
out some of the components of the network by
routeing the data through the undamaged
sections of the network. In the 1970s the mili-
tary part of the network was split from the
academic part giving us Milnet and the Inter-
net. The Internet grew steadily as a world-
wide, but mainly academic, network until the
late 1980s when the availability of relatively
cheap PC-based communications technology
and the associated software became more
abundant. As demand grew, Internet service
providers (ISPs) started to appear. These are
companies which offer Internet connections
to people whose systems are not already con-
nected to the Internet. This allowed home
users and smaller organizations to have
access they previously could not have
afforded. This generated more interest in the
Internet, which increased public awareness,
which created the situation we have today of
almost exponential growth in Internet activ-
ity.
Having looked at what the Internet is we
need to make clear what we mean by the term
“competitive advantage”. For the purpose of
this article I consider that the Internet can
give a business a competitive advantage if
any or all of the following statements apply, it
allows:
• the business to carry out a relevant busi-
ness activity it did before but quicker and/
or cheaper. Such as information retrieval or
research, or communication with offices/
customers around the world with e-mail or
IRC;
• the business to carry out a relevant busi-
ness activity it previously was unable to do.
Such as allowing customers to query com-
pany data at any time day or night from
anywhere in the world without requiring
the intervention of company staff. For more
details of such an operation see the com-
ments about the Federal Express’ Web ser-
vice discussed later;
• facilitates/inspires the business activity to
instigate a previously unthought of mode of
operation. An example being the purchase
and delivery of music via the Internet. Thus
doing away with the need for CD or cassette
production facilities and high street record
shops with their associated distribution
networks.
Having defined what is meant by competitive
advantage we can consider each of the previ-
ously mentioned Internet tools and try to
show how they can be used to meet the above
criteria. But first some facts and figures about
the use and potential of the Internet.
• According to work done by leading manage-
ment consultant Andersen Consulting,
high street shops could lose 20 per cent of
their trade to home shopping on the Inter-
net by the year 2000.
• Research done by the Institute of Informa-
tion Management found that 72 per cent of
business executives believed that the Inter-
net had the potential to serve as a key
source of business information.
To continue reading
Request your trial