Gateway

CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANIZATIONS University of California, Irvine 3200 Berkeley Place Irvine, CA, 92697-4650

GATEWAY COMPUTER: USING E-COMMERCE TO MOVE "BEYOND THE BOX" AND TO MOVE MORE BOXES

AUTHORS: Jason Dedrick, Kenneth L. Kraemer and Bryan MacQuarrie Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations University of California, Irvine

February 2001

Acknowledgement:

This research is supported by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (CISE/IIS/CSS)

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GATEWAY COMPUTER: USING E-COMMERCE TO MOVE “BEYOND THE BOX” AND TO MOVE MORE BOXES Jason Dedrick, Kenneth L. Kraemer and Bryan MacQuarrie Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations University of California, Irvine

INTRODUCTION The Internet and electronic commerce are said to support new organizational structures for firms and their value networks.1 In the process they are said to be altering the competitive dynamics of entire industries. If these claims are true, we would expect evidence of such organizational changes to show up first in industries that are early adopters of these technologies. One of the leaders in adopting e-commerce and the Internet has been the computer industry, which is using them for distribution, coordination with suppliers and customers, and revamping internal functions. Gateway, Inc. is an interesting case, as it has been implementing new strategies for e-commerce and developing Internet-based products and services at the same time as it has gone through a major strategic and organizational transition. Gateway is using the Internet as a key tool to support its transformation from a highly focused consumer PC vendor to a more diversified seller of hardware, software and services to both consumer and business markets. It also is using information technology and the Internet to support the creation of a new organization form—the value web—in which it coordinates a...