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We develop and test a model of how a software firm's business strategy (product scope and market scope) interacts with the firm's network position (alliance degree and structural holes) to impact performance. We test the joint-effects hypotheses on a sample 359 packaged software firms that have entered into 5,489 alliances involving 2,849 distinct firms during the time period, 1990–2002. While prior studies have demonstrated the importance of network positions as a determinant of firm strategy and performance, this chapter begins to examine the performance effects of how a firm's business strategy and network positions interact. We find support for three of the four hypotheses lending empirical support for our theoretical model. We develop implications for network-based perspectives of strategy and outline areas for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the pricing decisions and earning potential of the software supplier and the smart device manufacturer in different software promotion strategies.

Based on game theory, the authors formulate two promotion models, that is, the supplier implements software promotion activities individually (SP model) or outsources the promotion activity to the manufacturer under profit-sharing contract (MP model) when taking different channel power structures into consideration. Besides, in order to test the robustness of the conclusions, the authors also extend the basic model to the following situations: (1) the customers have different price elasticity toward service fee and product price; (2) the revenue sharing contract is employed by the supply chain members; and (3) the manufacturer's product promotion practice is taken into consideration.

The optimal service fee (product price) of the supplier (manufacturer) under SP model is always lower (higher) than that under MP model. Surprisingly, if the supplier is the channel leader and the profit sharing ratio exceeds certain threshold, the manufacturer's profit decreases in profit sharing ratio, which remains robust in three extension models. Moreover, the supply chain's profit in supplier-led game is always lower than that in Nash game irrespective of the promotion strategy in profit sharing context. When revenue sharing contract is adopted, the result holds only when the revenue sharing ratio is relatively low.

The authors originally explore two promotion strategies of the software supplier when taking the channel power structures into considerations, which has not been explored in the literature to the best of the authors' knowledge.

The main purpose of this paper is to improve a web content management system (WCMS) product line for future implementations by identifying software commonalities in WCMS‐based web applications. WCMS plays a central role in modern web application development: most large public and internal web sites are based on a WCMS foundation. If we can improve the implementation process, the effectiveness and efficiency of web application development will increase significantly.

This research identifies reusable solutions from existing WCMS implementations using problem diagrams and structured goal modeling. From configurations were matched with atomic e‐business models by linking them to the strategic competencies through bottom‐up goal modeling. A designed method was constructed on how requirements can be elicited for WCMS implementations using goal modeling and problem frames.

The resulting method provides insight in relevant e‐business models and their relation to software product lines. Moreover, the approach is applied in a WCMS study which demonstrates its applicability.

The practical implications of this research is twofold: WCMS developers now have a method to improve their product line based on e‐business models; and requirements engineers implementing WCMS can use this model to apply reusable software and prioritize requirements. Both will potentially have a large impact on the effectiveness of implementations since most web applications are developed with WCMS.

The paper presents a novel approach for efficient and effective identification of software commonalities. This research is part of the web engineering method that focuses on development of web applications based on WCMSs.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on understanding how value creation can be improved by developing dynamic capabilities in product development, in the case of a software engineering process.

The methodology involves a single‐case, longitudinal empirical study by progression of cycles of action research and data collection during a seven‐year period (1 January 2004‐31 November 2010), comprising 55 corporate projects.

This study will provide significant new information about value creation in multi‐disciplined product development. The study integrates value considerations into the principles and practices of software engineering, implements the aspect of dynamic capabilities in a software engineering process in order to create and sustain competitive advantage. As a result of the study, a model of value creation for software engineering process is created and guidelines are established.

The contextual features were strongly present during the research process, which means that the model created needs to be tested in other settings by other researchers.

The results of the study provide management with guidelines for developing and maintaining the importance of value creation in the software engineering process.

The paper presents a new model of value creation for the software engineering process in product development, through which competitive advantage is created and sustained.

In the cloud computing era, three merging developments in software industry are: cloud and on-premises software may offer complementary value to each other; cloud software service requires the support of significant information technology infrastructure; and software piracy problems can be better managed in the cloud. However, how these developments together impact a vendor’s bundling strategy has not yet been investigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Drawing on the product bundling framework, this research establishes stylized models to study a software vendor’s bundling decision in the cloud-based era with special consideration on the issue of software piracy.

The authors find different key parameters associated with the cloud era exert different effects on the bundling decision. When on-premises software and cloud software generate additional value by complementing each other, software vendors can make greater profits under the pure components (PC) strategy. Regarding a low infrastructure cost, software vendors should favor pure bundling (PB). The impact of piracy deterrence effectiveness is less straightforward – it favors PC when piracy deterrence effectiveness is low, but PB when piracy deterrence effectiveness is high.

This study makes key contributions to theory and practice. First, this is the first study to examine software bundling strategies in the cloud computing era, whereby the three factors relevant to the cloud phenomenon have been considered. Second, this paper contributes to the literature of bundling and software piracy by examining the intersection of these two streams of literature. Third, this paper sheds light on a vendor’s bundling decision when facing piracy problems in the emerging cloud software era.

Given that value exchange in virtually every sector of the economy is increasingly dominated by software, the goals of this chapter are to bring software to the attention of the academic marketing community, to discuss the unusual product attributes of software, and to therefore suggest some research topics related to software as a product attribute. Software allows service to be physically stored and allows physical objects to perform services. Managing products that have evolved into software products creates difficult challenges for managers as software does not resemble either tangible goods or intangible services in terms of production, operations, cost structure, or prescribed strategy. Every time a business replaces an employee with an e-service interaction, and every time a business adds a line of code to a previously inert object, the nature of that business changes. And as software gets more capable, its nature as a product changes as well by adding unique product characteristics summarized as complexity, intelligence, autonomy, and agency.

The purpose of this paper is to increase the knowledge of brand building in software SMEs.

The empirical method used is a multi‐case study. Data were collected from 20 companies in the software industry through in‐depth interviews. The data were analyzed using systematic coding and categorization of qualitative evidence.

The study identified five special characteristics of brand building in software SMEs, relating to goals and perceived benefits of brand building; resources in brand building; external and internal cooperation in brand building; means and communication in brand building; and the process of product brand building and its connection to software product development.

The scientific contribution of this empirical study relates to two aspects of brand management: branding in software business and branding in SMEs. A vast amount of literature exists on “brands”, “software business” and “SMEs”, but there is very little on “branding in software business” or “branding in SMEs”. Unarguably, there are two significant knowledge gaps in the literature, and they relate to branding in software and SME industries. Both theoretical and managerial knowledge is needed. This study corresponds to this need by increasing the knowledge of brand building in software SMEs with an empirical study. The present study is characterized by the general limitations of a case study. The results lack statistical reliability, they apply primarily in the case companies examined, and no direct generalizations should be made without further quantitative study.

Directors of SMEs often think that branding is just for big companies, but small companies with limited resources can brand their products and services as well. However, the means of branding are often different. The present study encourages SMEs to systematically think of the potential advantages of branding for their business, and develop creative, targeted, and affordable approaches for brand building.

The present empirical study makes an original contribution to the literature by increasing the knowledge of branding in the context of both SMEs and software business.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a pragmatic approach to components off‐the‐shelf (COTS)‐based development. Software product line (SPL) is at the forefront among the techniques for reducing costs, decreasing schedule time, and ensuring commonality of features across a family of products – as COTS are reused in multiple products.

A disciplined process for SPL development is still needed. This paper proposes the Y‐model for COTS‐based SPL development. The model put forward identifies and elaborates the essential phases and activities of SPL development from COTS‐based repository.

The Y‐model provides an efficient way of integrating the approaches of SPL and COTS‐based development as a cohesive software development model.

The model has the potential to tremendously increase software engineers' productivity. Thus, software architects, domain engineers and component designers should become aware of how to use these ideas to structure their models and designs.

This paper describes a systematic approach for COTS‐based development that takes into account the cataloguing and retrieval of software assets permeating a process that encompasses all stages of software development, from system product requirements engineering to system deployment.

The emergence of internet-enabled technology has led to the software service model in which the software firm, instead of the consumer, maintains software ownership. This model can curtail software piracy more effectively than the traditional on-premises software model. However, software firms are not abandoning traditional on-premises software but embracing both models simultaneously. In this study, the authors consider a firm’s software bundling decision in combination with its piracy deterrence strategy. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors build three stylized models to analytically compare the bundling strategies under three scenarios: no piracy, piracy is present and piracy is present while the firm applies digital rights management (DRM).

The authors find pure bundling (PB) to be the optimal strategy due to the combination of competition and cannibalization effects in mixed bundling (MB). Simultaneously, consumers may enjoy greater surplus in PB than in MB, making PB the preferred strategy for both the firm and consumers. Interestingly, the win-win outcome coexists with some degree of piracy in the market.

The results provide important insights for firms and policy-makers and contribute to the literature on piracy and product bundling. First, the authors show piracy could be another driver for product bundling, which has never been discussed in prior literature. Second, the authors suggest an alternative perspective; that PB may be a desirable outcome for both firms and consumers when considering piracy and DRM. More surprisingly, this desirable outcome occurs with some level of piracy in the market. The presence of piracy leads to competition and cannibalization effects in MB, which eventually results in the win-win outcome in the software market for both the firm and the consumers.

When purchasing digital content (DC), consumers are typically influenced by various information sources on the website. Prior research has mostly focused on the individual effect of the information sources on the DC choice. To fill the gap in the previous studies, this research includes three main effects: information cascades, recommendations and word of mouth. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the interaction effect of information cascades and recommendations on the number of software downloads.

The authors use the panel generalized least squares estimation to test the hypotheses by using a panel data set of 2,000 pieces of software at download.cnet.com over a month-long period. Product ranking and recommendation status are used as key independent variables to capture the effects of information cascades and recommendations, respectively.

One of this study’s findings is that information cascades positively interact with recommendations to influence the number of software downloads. The authors also show that the impact of information cascades on the number of software downloads is greater than one of the recommendations from a distributor does.

Information cascades and recommendations have been considered as the primary effects for online product choices. However, these two effects typically are not considered together in one research. As previous studies have mainly focused on each effect, respectively, the authors believe that this study may fill the gap by examining how these effects are interacted to one other to influence customers’ choices. The authors also show that the impact of information cascades on the number of software downloads is greater than one of the recommendations from a system does.