The Role of IT in Sustainable Competitive Advantage of Global Retailing Companies

The emphases of the study on IT competition value in enterprises have begun to transform from strategic information system, which is the carrier of achieving competitive advantage, to IT capability construction. The core of this transformation is how to obtain sustainable competitive advantage. This paper illustrates this by analyzing two leading retailing companies in the world, Wal-Mart and Japan 7-11. It puts forward the analysis framework of IT capability and mechanism of acquiring sustainable competitive advantage of company. The study points out, from the resource based theory, that the enterprise enjoys sustainable competitive advantage only if its resources and skills are valuable, rare, irreplaceable and difficult to imitate. Furthermore, the paper finds the importance of IT in sustainable competitive advantage of Wal-Mart and Japan 7-11. The key is the construction of logistic, governance capability, operation and corporate innovation, which are related to not only the technology, but also information technology. The experience of Wal-Mart and Japan 7-11 in IT capability construction has significant implication for other developing retailing companies.