Editorial 24/3: Electronic Markets and general research

Dear readers of Electronic Markets, We are happy to present you the third issue of volume 24 which includes five papers that were submitted to the general research section of Electronic Markets. As described in the editorial section of the last issue (Alt and Osterle 2014a, b) general research papers are a key element of the research paper section and currently account for slightly more than half of all submissions (as per end 2013). With a similar acceptance rate to special issue papers (approx. 11 %), it is not surprising that Electronic Markets also sees two general research issues within one volume. After the first issue in 2014, the current third issue represents the second in volume 24. We wish to use this opportunity to describe the variety of topics relevant to Electronic Markets (EM 2014) in more detail. In the first place, the spectrum of topics is related to the development of electronic commerce itself. When the journal was launched back in 1991, electronic markets were limited to exchanging a high volume of electronic business documents between application systems (EDI), to proprietary electronic exchanges in the financial sector, computerized reservation systems in the airline industry as well as to videotex-based early electronic shopping systems. Although electronic markets were attributed a significant potential (Malone et al. 1987, Osterle and Schmid 2008), the performance and diffusion of key technologies were still in their infancy. In particular, the Internet since the late 1980s has pushed electronic commerce and electronic markets towards a broader area range of applications. From the retrospective various stages of development may be observed which not only spurred a wealth of (business and technological) innovations, but also contributed additional research topics and questions. For example, in their compelling review of research on electronic commerce since 1988, Clarke and Pucihar (2013) have repeatedly indicated that the topics of Electronic Markets evolved in tandem with those published at the Bled eCommerce Conference. They identified three phases of evolution: the EDI era between 1988 and 1995, the eBusiness era between 1996 and 2004, and the eInteraction era since 2005. Others described the evolution in five stages (e.g. Tassabehji (2003) based on Earl (2000)) or more informal in multiple periods (e.g. Turban et al. 2006). Table 1 builds on the existing models and presents an updated view on the evolution phases and emphasizes that electronic markets have actually penetrated all aspects of modern economies. In the beginning proprietary technologies and solutions existed that were limited to specific application areas and primarily large organizations. The Internet was a key enabler in the early e-commerce era since it provided access to information independent of the underlying technological platform and interconnectivity across various providers. Static presences on the Internet appeared, but soon became more interactive and dynamic in the early e-business era. During this period many new businesses as well as exceeded expectations on the role of electronic markets emerged. However, the burst of the e-commerce bubble in the early 2000s showed that electronic commerce did not become obsolete, but shed light on linking the early e-business developments with the entire business operations and the subsequent potential to shape digital value chains. Following this idea a variety of important technologies spread, in particular, mobile devices, social media and virtualization technologies. The early digital ecosystems showed that electronic markets are now at the heart of business models in many industries (e.g. Alt and Klein 2011, 45) and with more convergence on the way they will contribute to the transformation of entire industries. For example, digital ecosystems providers, R. Alt (*) Information Systems Institute, University of Leipzig, Grimmaische Str. 12, 04109 Leipzig, Germany e-mail: rainer.alt@uni-leipzig.de