Title
Can vendors influence switching costs and compatibility in an environment with open standards?
Abstract
This paper examines the potential social costs of standardization, including possible vendor reactions to standards and their impacts on the adoption of new technology and long-term market structure. Specifically, we study how vendors might react to standards in the market for routers and switches, two of the most important pieces of networking hardware for the information systems infrastructure of modern firms. Using data from over 22,000 establishments surveyed by Harte Hanks Market Intelligence, we provide evidence that vendors are able to maintain high switching costs in the market for routers and switches despite the presence of open standards in the industry. Several vendor actions are discussed in this paper, including manipulating horizontal compatibility between comparable rival products and vertical compatibility between complementary products, maintaining a broader product line, creating product suites, and targeting specific market segments. Our results further suggest that the presence of switching costs can lead to inefficient adoption of new information technology and that vendors may be able to influence the speed of new information technology adoption.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2006
MIS Quarterly
inefficient adoption,comparable rival product,new technology,broader product line,new information technology adoption,long-term market structure,new information technology,specific market segment,open standard,information systems infrastructure,complementary product
DocType
Volume
Issue
Journal
30
1
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0276-7783
16
0.80
References 
Authors
1
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Pei-yu Chen11138.79
Chris Forman2554.74