Rattling SABRE—new ways to compete on information
Harvard Business Review
Frontiers of electronic commerce
Frontiers of electronic commerce
Viewpoint: challenging the new conventional wisdom of net commerce strategies
Communications of the ACM
Rosenbluth international: strategic transformation of a successful enterprise
Journal of Management Information Systems - Special section: Strategic and competitive information systems
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This case study examines the impact of online reservation systems and e-commerce on the travel industry. Two questions are examined: 1. How can competitive advantage be obtained from the exploitation of new information technologies--in particular, e-commerce technologies? 2. How has the role of travel agents chaaged because of the new information technologies being used to achieve competitive advantage in the air travel industry?Initial discussion concerns the impact of the American Airlines SABRE system, as this has often been touted as giving American Airlines first-mover advantage in the industry. The wider impact of remote-access, computerized reservation systems, or Global Distribution Systems, and e-commerce access to online reservations in the travel industry is analyzed, using Porter's five-force model of industry competitive forces, to understand how the travel industry has shaped and has been shaped by information systems.The case study concludes with a comparison of the impact of information technologies between the U.S. and European travel industries. It concludes that technology alone does not affect the roles of industry players, but the development of winning technologies exploits structural factors in the environment. Constant evolution of strategic information systems is critical to producing competitive advanatage, but opportunism also plays a strong role.