Research Paper on:
Internet and Competitive Advantage

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
as nullifying that, leaving successes as a factor dictated by marketing. Despite this Porter argues that "The Internet, then, is often not disruptive to existing industries or established companies.  It rarely nullifies the most important sources of competitive advantage in an industry, in many cases it actually makes those sources even more important".  The increase in generic companies, selling identical goods has been a common connection, the main differentiation being that of convenience which differentiates the business from traditional bricks  and mortar business. However, it can also be argued ion this environment, where there are few real models and the presence of a steep learning curve, the need for a  competitive advantage is more important than ever. To consider a single sector, such as the UK banking sector, the entire industry needs to be looked at first to gain a  deeper insight. The internet has been seen as completely separate way of doing business, one where many barriers are reduced, such as geographical barriers, meaning that large and small  companies alike can compete. This is true; indeed, companies such as pricerunner, (www.pricerunner.com) trade on this, undertaking to compare process for the same product at a range of supplier. When  this level of competition is seen and the consumer is becoming more aware, then there is also a strong argument that a company which can differentiate itself from the competition  has more to gain in an environment where there is little differentiation. An industry does not usually reach this level of competitiveness until it is in maturity (Thompson, 1998),  However, the internet medium is still in a growth stage (Hobley, 2002). The competitiveness is increasing due to the number of companies seeking to gain the customers attention and the