인터넷 포탈에 대한 자원 의존성이 온라인 쇼핑몰기업의 성장에 미치는 영향

It is widely confirmed that online retailers can obtain crucial resources and greater growth potential by dependingon the external web portal sites as it is explained in resource dependence theory. Nevertheless, recent studies showthat the effect of dependence may not always be beneficial for firms and stress the importance of finding relevantcontingent factors. In this study, we identify and suggest that firms’ age and niche width strategy, whether generalistor specialist, are contributing factors on moderating the positive relationship between resource dependence and firmgrowth. To test our hypotheses based on the theory, we have collected monthly web traffic data of online retailersand portals from March 2000 and July 2008. The empirical results lend support to our theory of the firm age havinga negative interaction effect on web traffic dependence. Moreover, results verified that positive effect of dependingon the portals may become greater if the online retailer is a specialist in terms of niche width.