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TITLE: Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
AUTHOR: Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian
ISBN: 087584863X
PUBLISHER: Harvard Business School Press
PUBLICATION DATE: 1999
LENGTH: 352 pages
PRICE: $29.95
SOURCE: ARMA International Bookstore's Additional Readings section
Have the fundamental principles of competition and business success changed drastically given the breathless advancement of the Internet and other technology advances?
In Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, authors Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian say "no." They assert that what technology has changed is how organizations use the information they gather in the course of business.
For example, Lands' End's mailorder house doesn't keep that much more customer and order information than Sears Roebuck did for its catalog business a century ago. However, Lands' End has a much greater capability to manipulate that customer information for a variety of uses - to analyze customers' needs and buying patterns, to improve product design to differentiate their products in the marketplace, to conduct one-to-one marketing campaigns, and to provide alternatives for conducting transactions with banks as well as customers....