On the creation and evaluation of e-business model variants: The case of auction

E-business model variants aim at creating customer value through differentiation. At the core are two major components of the business model concept—business process and customer value. Focusing narrowly on these components, this paper provides a new and systematic way to identify both, create potentially competitive variants, and to evaluate them quantitatively. With a clear presentation of the whole business process, it is possible to highlight key sub-processes, and increase a shared understanding between multiple stakeholders. Moreover, understanding customer preference and the expected market share of potential variants can allow managers to benefit from clear value propositions for variants' potential profitability. Our method also promotes rapid and efficient consensus-building about the most competitive variant. Taken together, our proposed method will help both managers and researchers refine the business model more precisely. An e-auction case in Korea is presented to illustrate the empirical application of our method in detail.