Creating Competitive Advantage with Electronic Commerce

Masterarbeit von Frank Berger

Abstract:

As electronic commerce is quickly increasing within some industries such as computers, software and retail banking the question arises whether and how insurance companies can profit too. This dissertation evaluates the impact of electronic commerce on the German insurance industry with the overall goal of creating competitive advantage.

The dissertation proceeds by reviewing the literature for definitions and perspectives of electronic commerce, the suitability of electronic commerce for insurance products and services, the impact on existing business processes and value chains as well as the sources for creating competitive advantage within a mature insurance industry. Additionally, its organizational implications have also been examined.

This dissertation contains fieldwork on the issues focused on in theory. Primary data was gathered using a questionnaire and a few interviews that were conducted with Chief Information Officers (CIO). The results of these activities were analysed and discussed by comparing them with both theory and experiences of other industries.

Table of Contents:

	Abstract	1
1.	Introduction	2
1.1	Objectives	2
1.2	Approach	3
2.	Hypothesis and Objectives	4
3.	The German insurance industry	5
3.1	Status quo	5
3.2	Future trends	7
4.	Literature review	10
4.1	E-Commerce - characteristics and perspectives	10
4.2	Insurance products and services in electronic commerce	14
4.3	Electronic commerce and the value chain	17
4.4	Competitive advantage	20
4.5	Business processes within the insurance industry	26
4.6	Organisational implications for electronic commerce	31
4.7	Success factors for Electronic commerce	34
4.8	Summary of literature research	35
5.	Fieldwork	39
5.1	Research and objectives	39
5.2	Methodology and scope - outline	39
5.3	Questionnaire on e-commerce	40
5.4	Interviews with CIO’S	41
5.5	Limitations of the research	41
6.	Findings and analysis of Fieldwork Data	42
6.1	General findings	42
6.2	Future industry trends	44
6.3	Consumer profiles, expectations and behaviour	47
6.4	Products and services	50
6.5	Value chain and competitive advantage	53
6.6	Business processes	59
6.7	Focused areas	63
6.8	Constraints	64
6.9	Summary of fieldwork	66
7.	Conclusions	67
7.1	Conclusions drawn from the literature	67
7.2	Conclusions drawn from the fieldwork	68
7.3	Final conclusions-correlations between the literature and fieldwork	69
8.	Recommendations	70
9.	Appendices	73
9.1	Appendix 1	73
9.2	Appendix 2	74
9.3	Appendix 3: Questionnaire	75
9.4	Appendix 4: Interview guide	80
9.5	Appendix 5	83
10.	Bibliography	84