The international growth of e-commerce ventures

This research investigates the potential of the Internet in continued SME internationalization processes, drawing on two case-studies of Internet-based firms. We investigate how e-commerce start ups embrace the new technology to implement an international strategy from the outset and whether and how the Internet continues to play an important role as the venture develops. Results show that the key to international growth is not the Internet per se, but the Internet-based firm’s ability to develop a coherent set of organizational capabilities in order to exploit the global opportunities embedded in e-business. In particular, customer management capabilities seem to be crucial for internet based firms’ succes