Evolution of business models and industrial organization. Uncertainty, competition and imitation behavior in the French Press Industry.
Résumé
A body of literature shows the destabilizing role of information and communication technologies in the creative and cultural industries in general, and in press industry in particular. This literature demonstrates that constant experimentation and innovation in the area of organizational arrangements and business models (BM) has become a key competitive advantage. As a result, traditional BMs, which were dominant and stable in different cultural industries (such as media, film, music, publishing etc), have given rise to a variety of arrangements in business management and the emergence of disruptive and innovative business models, which often successfully coexist in the same market segment. This means that creativity may refer not only to innovations within the world of art, knowledge, products or services, but also to new manners of financing, producing, and developing these goods and services, i.e., to the way business models are designed. In other words, an organization can be creative on the basis of its business model. The case of the French press is quite symptomatic of that standpoint. In fact, since the mid-2000s, a large number of innovations and models have surfaced within the media industry, leading to the assumption that new and old organizations alike must position themselves in a highly dynamic environment by experimenting with different ways of conducting their business activities.
To understand the dynamics and trajectory of the innovation process, the question arises as to what are the drivers of this change: Whether strategic and structural change is necessarily driven by competition, the need for efficiency and purely individualistic approach? Or else, other factors, such as imitation behavior also determine the actors’ strategic choices, resulting in appearance of some homogenization process and establishment of dominant economic models?
Our previous empirical studies (Benghozi & Lyubareva, 2014; Lyubareva & Rochelandet, 2016; Lyubareva et al., 2018) put in light how the BM transformations during the 2004-2014 period, in particular the arrival on the market of the pure players, contributed to the structuring of the three dominant categories of BMs in the French press. These models were stabilizing and clarifying their respective properties over the years: “Exploring Leaders” introduced more and more paid on-line offerings and improved the scope of interaction mechanisms with readers (including generalization of readers’ blogs and forums); “Pure Players” put forward free offerings and the concept of citizen journalism; and “A minima digital” supported minimal Internet exposure. Such progressive strategic homogenization was reinforced by presence of the mimicry isomorphism phenomenon (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), characterizing strategic, structural change and high uncertainty in the French press during the observed period.
In line with this previous empirical analysis of press websites, the current paper focuses on the recent period of 2015-2020 and addresses two questions:
- Whether, like pure players in 2007-2008, new alternative right and left-wing media flourishing online have the same restructuring effect on the economic models in the French press industry?
- To what extent the current transformation of the economic models is determined by previously observed isomorphic process and underlying mimicry behavior among the press outlets?
The theoretical framework of our study bases on the literature on the industrial evolution dynamics in the perspective of dominant design (Katz & Shapiro, 1985; Arthur, 1989; Klepper, 1996) and isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). According to this approach, industrial convergence is linked to the mimicry behavior in the strategic choices of the economic actors. Such sort of actors’ behavior may appear in different environments and may be the result of various phenomena. In particulier, literature distinguishes two forms of mimicry. First one is the information-based imitation (Bikhchandani et al., 1998), linked to the strong context’s uncertainty “where firms follow others that are perceived as having superior information” (Lieberman & Shigeru, 2006). Second one is the rivalry-based imitation “where firms imitate others to maintain competitive parity or limit rivalry” (Ibid.). In the second case, the competitors, i.e. the actors having similar market positions and resources, decide to copy each other rather than taking the risk to differentiate from the competitors (Deephouse, 1999; Chen et al., 1992; Garcia-Pont & Nohira, 2002).
On the basis of this theoretical framework, our analysis relies on the original methodology and data set in the BM studies. The panel data was collected from the 83 representative media websites for the 2015-2020 period so as to cover the three main components of business models: value creation, value capture, and value network. These components were represented by 35 different variables. Each variable of each component was translated into a binary variable (1 signifying the presence of a given characteristic, otherwise 0). A multidimensional exploratory statistical approach was then conducted in order to define the evolution of the business models each year, amounting to a 5-year observation for each website in our sample. The choice was made to carry out a multiple correspondence analysis, followed by an ascending hierarchical classification (Greenacre, 1984; Clausen, 2008; Hair et al., 1995).
Then, in keeping with the literature, we suggest that a player’s choice of a particular business model can be guided by the exploitation of available data on the own performance or the performance gathered by other companies (the competitors’ audience figures), or by various forms of imitation behavior (information or rivalry-based). While the first motivation represents a rational approach in terms of competition, the second may be considered as reaction to a high level of uncertainty or competition. The impact of these variables on the players’ decision to leave their initial business model cluster is analyzed thanks to the econometric model Probit, using random individual effects. This model is based on the idea that a player’s change in business models is a medium-term strategic choice which calls for a preparation period. A one-year gap is hence inserted between the independent variables and a player’s decision to change business models. Based on the principle of backward induction, this study assumes that the second step of the analysis based on the Probit model is actually the underlying process of the first phase showing the convergence of business models towards the dominant clusters in the press industry.
This study provides two important insights. Firstly, we find out that alternative medias did give rise to an original cluster of economic models, but only during a short period of time (2 years). After this short experimentation, in their further development, these actors have adopted one of the two previous dominant economic models of other press outlets: i.e. the model popular among the pure players and the model of the press leaders with subscription offerings. Secondly, the paper substantiates in 2015-2020, similarly to the 2010-2014 period, the presence of mimicry behavior among the actors in their choice of economic models. However, contrary to the information-based imitation in 2010-2014, during this recent observation period the type of behavior corresponds to the rivalry-based imitation. We conclude by discussion of the potential consequences of this evolution dynamics on the news diversity.