A VALUE PLATFORM ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE ON CUSTOMER ACCESS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Customer access information technologies (CAITs) provide a link betwee n a firm and its customers. Firms invest in CAITs to reduce costs, inc rease revenues and market share, lock in existing customers, and captu re new ones. These benefits, however, are notoriously difficult to mea sure. This paper proposes an evaluative method for CAIT deployment cal led value platform analysis, based on a conceptual model drawn from th e theory of retail outlet deployment in marketing science. Value platf orm analysis evaluates the impact of the features of a CAIT, the featu res of its immediate site, and the features of the larger environment into which it is deployed on the transactions it generates and the res ulting business value outcomes. Value platform analysis is then applie d in an electronic banking context. Hypotheses regarding the likely im pact of automatic teller machine (ATM) functionality the immediate sit e's surrounding traffic, the customer demographics, and the number of competitors in the environment on ATM transactions are evaluated both before and after the merger of two regional ATM networks. The results indicate that there are a number of key features influencing ATM perfo rmance. Two distinct ATM deployment scenarios emerge: one for servicin g a bank's own customers, and another for providing transaction servic es for customers for a fee. The merger of regional networks impacts ea ch of these scenarios differently.