ABSTRACT
By offering interactive e-commerce applications and services, and thereby actively engaging consumers in the communication process, businesses increasingly are emphasizing solid and sustainable relationships that may help them achieve competitive advantages in the electronic marketplace (Porter, 2001). As a result, one might expect a rich literature and ample empirical insights into the important issue of interactivity management in the e-commerce domain. However, my own review of this literature concludes that a clear picture of the relationship between interactivity and its impact on the business value of an organization has not emerged from previous studies. Although creating business value from interacting with customers in the electronic marketplace is far from being a new academic proposition (Amit & Zott, 2001; Armstrong & Hagel, 1996; Zeithaml, 1988), the concept warrants closer study from the perspective of e-commerce management (Jiang, Chan, & Tan, 2010; Yadav & Varadarajan, 2005a,b) in an attempt to reconcile limited and contradictory findings resulting from a variety of deficiencies. These include: inconsistent conceptual definitions of interactivity, different units and levels of analysis (i.e., the question of identifying a locus of interactivity; does it reside in the infrastructure, distribution and/or end-user technology, the communication structures and processes, and/or in the perceived consumer control over the media and communication process?), and a largely incoherent base of theory for examining relations and interdependencies between the abovementioned factors.
