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Digital technology is crucial to improving a firm’s core competitiveness. However, the existing research on the relationship therein shows heterogeneity. Using digital technology can enhance competitive advantage, which is crucial for enterprises and scholars. Thus, based on the digital technology affordance theory, this study explores the relationship between digital technology affordance and digital competitive advantage.

Survey data were collected from 509 large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China, and multiple regression and structural equation modelling were used to test the hypotheses. Specifically, we discuss the mediating role of digital business capability and the moderating role of organisational legitimacy.

Editability, association and visibility positively affect digital competitive advantage, and their coordination is strong. Further, they can help enterprises gain a competitive advantage through the mediating role of digital business capability (digital strategy, digital integration and regulation). However, the influence effect and action path differ per in different dimensions. Organisational legitimacy positively moderates the mediating effect of digital integration and regulation, and there is a moderated mediating effect. However, the moderating effect on the mediating effect of digital strategy is not significant.

Existing studies neglect the relationship between the coordination of digital technology functions and digital competitive advantage. This study provides a new theoretical explanation for an in-depth understanding of these issues. These findings promote the development of innovation theory and provide valuable insights for guiding the application of digital technology in enterprises.

This article aims to examine the impact of multiple suppliers on competitive advantage by exploiting digital capabilities.

The author propose a structural equation model with the adopted measure from the literature. Hence, the study conducted an online survey in Indonesia with 450 qualified respondents involving managers and owner-managers.

The results indicate multiple suppliers help the firms to exploit digital capabilities, which foster them to achieve competitive advantage. Hence, different level of market turbulences determines the impact of numerous suppliers on competitive advantage. Specifically, the multiple-suppliers approach is more effective in supporting buyer firms to gain a competitive advantage during high market turbulence than low market turbulence.

This study offers empirical evidence with unit analysis of buyer firms that seek competitive advantage by exploiting digital capability. However, this approach focusses on a single unit analysis, which is buyer firms. Hence, there is an opportunity to adopt qualitative approach to explore the suppliers and end-users from different perspectives from other supply chain players.

This article contributes to the growing literature on the resource-based theory by examining the relationship between the multiple-sourcing model and competitive advantage. The authors also discuss the intersection between resource-based, dynamic capability and stakeholder theory.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of Islamic marketing ethics and convergence marketing on competitive advantage and bank performance.

This study is based on a survey of 204 Indonesian branch managers from the Islamic banking industry. Results were produced with the partial least square approach.

Results revealed that Islamic marketing ethics and convergence marketing have sufficient confidence to have significant influences on competitive advantage, producing a positive association with a competitive advantage. However, Islamic marketing ethics and convergence marketing did not influence bank performance directly. Competitive advantage positively mediated the relationship. Furthermore, organizational digital literacy did not moderate the relationship between convergence marketing and bank performance.

This study contributes to the conceptualization of convergence marketing and the identification of its effects on competitive advantage and bank performance. The identification of convergence marketing in this dissertation contains dimensions of mobile, security, foreign currency, holistic and interactivity as different aspects from the steps of Islamic banks to digitize their services to the internet in a single application. The results also indicate that convergence marketing does not have a direct effect on bank performance but has an indirect effect through competitive advantage. Convergence marketing must first create a bank advantage over its competitors to have a good effect on bank performance.

This study offers many opportunities for Islamic bank marketers to improve performance. Many Islamic banks currently do not implement Islamic marketing ethics consistently and thoroughly. The results of this study encourage Islamic banks by showing that the more intensive and consistent they are in implementing Islamic marketing ethics, the better their competitive advantage and the higher the performance. This effort can be done in various ways, such as offering tariffs/ratios of services transparently to customers, not exaggerating the benefits of the products offered to distort customer expectations, building brands that can strengthen customer confidence in Islamic banks and only offering products and services with high-quality standards.

This study uses a sample of Islamic banking so that it is still limited to certain types of banks. Future research needs to conduct model testing in different contexts such as conventional banking. In addition, further research needs to use the capabilities or capabilities of bank IT as a moderator in the effect of convergence marketing on bank performance. Future research also needs to control for more variables and use a scale that is more complex than the binary scale (for example, the percentage of share ownership or territory in the scope of the province or district/city).

This research views the Islamic bank competitiveness through the lenses of Islamic ethical theory and convergence marketing theory.

The combination of strategic orientation and digitalization for sustainable competitive advantage among small businesses is still not given much attention in the literature. Therefore, this study aims to understand the influence of strategic orientation on sustainable competitive advantage while mediating the relationship with digitalization.

This study used a cross-sectional design. This design helped collect data from 234 small businesses in Arusha city, Tanzania. Since the study used latent variables, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze relationships and conduct confirmatory factor analysis. Through bootstrapping confidence intervals, Hayes's Process was also used to test how digitalization mediates the relationship between strategic orientations and sustainable competitive advantage.

The strategic orientation attributes that include market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation and learning orientation were positively and significantly related to digitalization. Furthermore, the results on digitalization and sustainable competitive advantage show a significant positive relationship. Finally, digitalization was analyzed to mediate the relationship between strategic orientation, market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, learning orientation and sustainable competitive advantage. Hence, all hypotheses were supported.

This study adopted a cross-sectional design that helped to capture the quantitative information. In addition, the current study is limited to Tanzania's small businesses; thus, the findings cannot assure generalization of the conclusion to other countries because of the differences in social, cultural and technology across countries.

This study integrates the concepts of strategic orientation from the strategic management discipline and digitalization from a technology perspective. As a result, the study adds new knowledge about combining two aspects and determining whether they add value in terms of providing a sustainable competitive advantage. This knowledge comes from digitalization, which acts as a mediator between strategic orientation dimensions and a sustainable competitive advantage.

Business model innovation (BMI) has been posited as essential for both new and existing digital business, as they commonly operate in competitive and fast-moving markets with limited entry barriers. However, it is highlighted within the literature that the understanding of how BMI contributes to business success and how new digital ventures develop competitive advantage is still unclear. This study aims to address this lacuna by exploring how young Chinese digital businesses develop and innovate their business models to survive in fast-moving and competitive markets.

This research adopted a multiple case study design, with qualitative data being collected from the founders of five Chinese digital businesses, to develop an understanding of the evolution of their business models and BMI from their inception.

The findings add support for the contention that BMI can play an important role and is beneficial in the success of such new digital ventures in highly competitive environments. The founders attribute their success to a willingness for continued BMI, an openness to new opportunities, developing customer relationships and continuous iteration.

This research addresses calls to further the authors’ understanding of how BMI contributes to business success and how new digital ventures develop competitive advantage by exploring the BMI of five highly successful digital businesses from their inception.

This chapter delves into the impact of digital initiatives on firms and sheds light on how they can be explained through market reactions and the resource/capabilities mechanism. By providing a novel conceptual framework that reflects the potential impact of digital initiatives on the sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities of dynamic capabilities, this chapter reveals the tremendous potential of digital initiatives to help firms become more adaptive to their environment and create sustainable competitive advantages that elicit positive market responses. This conceptual framework represents an original contribution to the literature. It enhances the understanding of the resource-based view and efficient market hypothesis, providing a fresh perspective on the influence of digital initiatives on firm performance and the dynamic capabilities mechanism that has hitherto been overlooked. As a result, this chapter enables researchers to develop testable hypotheses that examine the causal relationships between digital initiatives, dynamic capabilities and market performance using robust quantitative research methods. Furthermore, this chapter offers valuable insights for managers seeking to develop a more focused approach to digital transformation and enhance their competitive advantage. By exploring the impact of digital initiatives on sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities, managers can gain a deeper understanding of how they can leverage digital initiatives to improve their organisational performance and respond more effectively to the demands of an ever-changing landscape.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of a competitive action and its impact on the response of rivals in the digital market. Specifically, this paper introduces the concept of action complexity and action variation to delineate the configuration characteristics of each digital competitive action and empirically investigates how these action characteristics further affect rivals’ response speed.

This paper uses structural content analysis methods to code competitive actions based on the news of Chinese online travel agencies (OTAs) from 2010 to 2015. The cox proportional hazards regression models are employed to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that action complexity of the focal firm is negatively associated with rivals’ response speed as it constrains their interpretation (awareness), motivation and capability to respond, while action variation of the focal firm is positively associated with rivals’ response speed as it enhances their attention (awareness) and motivation to respond. Furthermore, the negative relationship between action complexity and response speed is weaker when action variation is high.

Further to advancing competitive dynamics theory, this paper proposes an action-configuration perspective to explore the particular content and quality of each digital competitive action. The discussion of competitive rivalry between OTAs also enriches the application of competitive dynamics in the digital market. Meanwhile, this paper further clarifies the decision-making process of rivalry drawing on the awareness–motivation–capability (AMC) framework.

The ability of a business to outperform its rivals is known as its competitive edge, and it presents special difficulties in the context of the “digital revolution,” or the fourth industrial revolution. To obtain a competitive edge in the startup operations 4.0 era, this study aims to examine the organizational, technological and competence-related challenges presented by Industry 4.0. It does this by concentrating on the tools, competencies, methods, approaches, tools and strategies that are crucial. Using the Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM) technique, the goal is to find, analyze and classify enablers for startup operations 4.0.

A closed-ended questionnaire and planned interviews were used in the data collection process. In startup operations 4.0, the cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification method is used to rank and categorize competitive advantage factors, whereas the TISM technique is used to analyze how components interact.

The study highlights the critical significance of the “Internet of Things (IoT),” “information technologies,” “technological platforms,” “employee empowerment,” “augmented reality (AR)” and “operational technologies” in its identification of 12 enablers for startup operations 4.0.

The main focus of the study is on the variables that affect startup operations 4.0’s competitive advantage.

Academics and important stakeholders can better understand the factors influencing competitive advantage in startup operations 4.0 with the help of this research.

Large businesses have been profoundly impacted by Industry 4.0 principles; however, startup operations 4.0’s competitive advantage has not received as much attention. This paper offers a fresh take on the concept of competitive advantage in startup operations 4.0 research.

This study aims to explore whether the blockchain technology (BCT), as a unique and distinctive resource, affects the development of unique capabilities and the integration and reconfiguration of internal physical and human resources necessary to gain a trusted competitive advantage.

A case study approach has been used to identify the internal resources and capabilities that affect the decision to implement BCT and to determine whether this new technology can become a strategic internal resource in the wine industry.

Results show the role of two strategic resources: human resources, such as IT specialists and software developers for BCT applications, and skills of companies’ management to grant sensitive and confidential data to IT specialists and the ability to read the analytics from the BCT application, becoming a distinctive enabling assets.

The main limitation of this study is related to the analysis of a single case, which, on the one hand, does not allow generalisation of the empirical findings but, on the other hand, is themost appropriatemethod for the explorative nature of this research.

Our findings have useful practical implications for wineries and agri-food companies in overall because they can support managers and entrepreneurs in effectively implementing these innovative digital technologies in their valuecreation process.

The study of this underexplored topic gives interesting insights into the resources needed for the successful adoption of this emerging technology, which can support wineries in improving the value-creating process. In particular, compared to the previous studies, this research analyses the adoption process under the resource-based theory lens.

This paper aims to deepen the concept of service quality in digital libraries based on the analysis of the Digital Library Service Quality Model (adapted from Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Malhotra) and a multiple‐item scale (dlQUAL scale) created to evaluate the quality and performance of service delivered by the Portuguese Digital Library Consortium as part of the Digital Library Integrated Evaluation Programme.

The Digital Library Service Quality Model makes it possible to assess gaps between different levels based on a multiple‐item scale to evaluate service quality, which was designed as a web survey. Considering the strategical groups (users, LIS professionals, library managers and top managers), the research team developed four different web‐survey versions to evaluate the different gaps. In the first step of this study, they looked for measures validity.

The scale proved good psychometric proprieties. This study also showed the usefulness of the Digital Library Service Quality Model to evaluate and analyze digital libraries' service quality.

The scale is valid and useful to evaluate digital libraries' service quality and it can provide valuable performance information to digital libraries' decision‐makers. Moreover, the Digital Library Service Quality Model is a useful instrument to check the critical points that are related to organizational deficiencies. If these gaps are regularly monitored, it is possible to implement adequate correction measures and improve service quality.

This paper presents a Library Service Quality Model specifically designed to evaluate digital libraries.