Agencies

Vendors frequently compete to have their technology adopted as part of a voluntary consensus standard, and this paper reports the results of an empirical study of the factors that influence the choice of technologies by voluntary technical standards committees. Participation in standards committees is viewed as an aspect of the product development process of corporations involved in markets where network externalities are present. The factors hypothesized to affect the technology decision are: (1) the market power of the coalition sponsoring the technology; (2) the size of the firms that make up the coalition; (3) the promotional activities of the sponsors (such as technical contributions submitted); (4) the perceived superiority of the technology; (5) the political skills of the coalition; and (6) the installed base of the products containing the technology. These hypotheses were tested by collecting data o