Abstract:

While the Internet, with the increased popularity of application, has made customers more powerful in market exchange, it too brings firms with new capabilities. Taking the Internet as one of foundational environment factors rather than merely a new channel of communication or marketing, this paper proposes and defines the concepts of Internet interactive technology, firm’s interactive capability and interactive strategy from the perspective of interactive technology. It then constructs a conceptual framework of firm’s interactive capability and interactive strategy on the basis of Internet interactive technology after a discussion about the relationships among these concepts. Accordingly, even if all the firms live in the environment, they are different in interactive capability as a result of their differences in application of Internet interactive technologies, which in term would lead to the differences in their interactive strategies and behaviors and hereafter to the differences in their performance. Finally, this paper offers several directions for the future studies on the topic.

Key words: Internet interactive technology, interactive capability, interactive strategy, Internet environment