Organizational network research has demonstrated that multiple benefits accrue to people occupying brokerage positions. However, the extant literature offers scant evidence of the process postulated to drive such benefits –information brokerage– and therefore leaves unaddressed the question of how brokers broker. We address this gap by examining the information-brokerage interactions in which a...

The ability to retain and lock-in customers in the face of competition is a major concern for e-commerce businesses, especially those that invest heavily in advertising and customer acquisition. In this paper, we propose a method for measuring the magnitude of switching costs and brand loyalty for on-line service providers based on the random utility modeling framework. Applying this approach t...

Analyzing network associations with performance in three study populations, I find that secondhand brokerage—moving information between people to whom one is only connected indirectly—often has little or no value. Brokerage benefits are dramatically concentrated in the immediate network around a person. Why that is so, and conditions under which it is more or less so, are examined. The research...

The work reported here is underpinned by a set of generic enterprise models of brokerage developed with the aim of defining an open architecture for distributed on-line resources brokerage. This paper describes examples of how responsibilities can be distributed in a number of different ways on to the various actors to create different brokerage scenarios. In particular we discuss three sets of...

This paper analyzes the impact of e-commerce on markets where established firms face competition from Internet-based entrants with focused offerings. In particular, we study the retail brokerage sector where the growth of online brokerages and the availability of alternate sources of information and research services have challenged the dominance of traditional brokerages. We develop a stylized...

nologies, particularly the Internet, have profoundly changed the dynamics of financial markets. More people are trading online through the Web instead of using full-service brokerages. According to Jupiter Communications, the $415 billion online brokerage assets in 1998 will grow by more than sevenfold to $3 trillion in 2003 [4]. Investors Combining new technology with established financial mar...

The ability to retain and lock-in customers in the face of competition is a major concern for online businesses, especially those that invest heavily in advertising and customer acquisition. In this paper, we develop and implement an approach for measuring the magnitude of switching costs and brand loyalty for online service providers based on the random utility modeling framework. We then exam...

The ability to retain and lock-in customers in the face of competition is a major concern for online businesses, especially those that invest heavily in advertising and customer acquisition. In this paper, we develop and implement an approach for measuring the magnitude of switching costs and brand loyalty for online service providers based on the random utility modeling framework. We then exam...

This paper investigates how the control benefits of a broker’s structural position are constrained by the perceived quality of actors a broker may represent in an exchange. I propose that brokers prefer to represent high quality actors but also that the value an actor places on representation is inversely related to the actor’s perceived quality. This tension implies that neither the actors tha...

Shifting away from traditional approaches orientated towards the analysis of the benefits associated with brokerage, this paper provides valuable insights on the dynamics of this network position providing opportunities to innovate. Using fine grain micro data collected in a foodstuff Spanish cluster, the evolution of five different brokerage profiles is analysed in depth. Particularly, we obse...