ABSTRACT
Enhanced television (ETV) or interactive television (ITV) has been touted as the key to transform the television industry since the 1980s. Though the actual product offerings and consumer demand have fallen short of expectations over time and the introduction of ETV (ETV represents all relevant terms hereafter) turned out to be a slow evolution rather than a dramatic revolution, technological advances in distribution systems and computing in recent years have again put these services on the forefront of the industry road map. Much has been written about the nature of consumer demand for ETV (Gunter, 2003; Ha & Chan-Olmsted, 2002; Vorderer, Knobloch, & Schramm, 2001), the arrays of ETV ventures (Kerschbaumer, 2004), and the technical aspects of these services (Martin, 2002; Ranger, 2004); however, few scholars have tackled the strategic and competitive implications of these market activities for media firms. This chapter first discusses the historical development of ETV from the perspectives of strategy and competition. It then reviews the major ETV applications in recent years, discusses the strategic implications of these ventures, assesses leading media firms’ strategic portfolios concerning ETV, and finally proposes a value chain framework that depicts the value creation process, sources of competitive advantages, and major players in the evolving ETV market.
