Software Business Models from a Distribution Perspective: A Systematic Mapping Study

Business models (BMs) describe how a company creates and delivers value to customers, the products or services that it offers and the compensation for them. Software companies need to be able to adopt different BMs to be successful in modern economy. Despite the number of publications on the field, there is still not a clear picture of software BMs. The purpose of this study is to structure and characterize the state of the art on software BMs with focus on sales and distribution models to help discover possible research gaps. The authors of this study conducted a systematic mapping study using relevant keywords to identify primary studies in the existing literature related to software BMs from a business management perspective. The search strategy returned 1871 papers and 51 were selected as primary studies. The analysis of results helps clarify the picture of software BMs and highlights the most relevant sources of papers. Results also reveal the broad interest of researchers on this topic. Most of the primary studies were related to service-based BMs, and to a lesser extent on product-based or open-source-based BMs; there is also an increase in the attention of researchers towards models built around mobile apps. While many authors report experience papers, only some authors validate or evaluate new proposals of sales and distribution models.