Early-mover advantages at cross-border business-to-business e-commerce portals

The Internet enables enterprises to sell their products via cross-border business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce portals. However, researchers know little about the early-mover advantages for such third-party platforms. The rapid, convenient, and wide market access offered by these platforms may allow early-mover exporters to enjoy advantages over late movers in terms of learning effects and switching costs. We hypothesize that early-mover advantages may diminish beyond a critical length of tenure because of the free-riding costs, resolution of technological or market uncertainty, as well as the incumbent inertia of early movers. We also argue that product price and diversity will pose different boundary conditions on how early-mover advantages are manifested. Using web search and mining methods, we collect data on approximately 300,000 B2B export transactions conducted by nearly 4000 firms in 2007-2014 through online portals. Employing panel data models, we find strong evidence supporting our hypotheses.