E-commerce: a tool to form alliances and organizational networks or to motive competitiveness? A study of case with the secondhand bookstores in Natal (RN)

Abstract

Nowadays we face a new revolution, marked basically by information technology. With this, organizations have sought an increasingly intense and broad use of Information Technology, using it as a business tool, which modifies the basis of strategic and operational competitiveness of companies. The use of open and public infrastructure, as the internet, has allowed to provide products and services in an easier and cheaper way for customers, and to carry out the processes at a more suitable cost, besides creating competitive alliances that will help as market differential. This article seeks to analyze if the electronic commercialization of second-hand books by small bookstores, the ‘sebos’, in the city of Natal / RN through an internet portal, here called “Portal dos Sebos”, appears as an alliance formation and organizational network among the participants of this activity, or on the contrary, serves to foster competition. With the result obtained by the interpretation of the interviews carried out with the owners of those stores, we come to the conclusion that the relationship between them is not configured as an organizational network. However, the relationship between the “sebos” and the “Portal dos Sebos” appears as a strategic business alliance for the storekeepers.