The rapid growth of Internet technologies induced a structural change in both social and economic spheres. Digital channels have become an integral part of daily life, and their influence on the transfer of information has become ubiquitous. An entirely new business dimension that may be referred to as the Net economy has emerged. Internet-based e-ventures that are operating at this electronic trade level are based on innovative and promising online business models (Kollmann, 2006). But also traditional enterprises that are operating at the physical trade level (real economy) increasingly utilize digital channels to improve their business processes and to reach new customer segments. With the Internet, the cooperation between enterprises reached a new level of quality. The wide, open, and cost-effective infrastructure allows a simple, fast exchange of data and thus a synchronization of business processes over large distances. Particularly for e-ventures introducing their new business ideas, online cooperation is a promising strategy as it enables the partners to create more attractive product offers and represents a basis for more efficiently and effectively communicating and distributing their product offers (Kollmann, 2004; Volkmann & Tokarski, 2006). Online cooperation, however, does not incorporate off-line channels such as print media, stores, or sales forces. For the combined management of online and offline channels, cooperation can be expected to hold an outstanding potential. Partnering with companies from the Net economy may help traditional enterprises to reach new market segments without extending themselves beyond their core competencies—and vice versa. In this context, cross-channel cooperation can be defined as the collaborative integration of online and offline business models aiming at attaining positive synergetic effects for the involved partners by a complement of competencies. (Kollmann & Häsel, 2006, p. 3) Cross-channel cooperation can be regarded a new management task that is worthwhile to be examined in more detail. Although researchers have broadly covered the area of online cooperation, a comprehensive study on cross-channel cooperation has not been undertaken up to now. Particularly the question arises, which cooperation forms represent feasible strategies for both e-ventures and traditional enterprises. Besides its contribution to literature, this article is intended to assist practitioners in evaluating the benefits of crosschannel cooperation for their own businesses.
Effects of enterprise sustainability on performance
