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The Strategic Role of Communication Standards for Media Companies

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Information Systems and Management in Media and Entertainment Industries

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Abstract

Standards setting has gone from being a technical concern for individual companies to being a factor with important strategic implications for cooperation and competition among market players. The strategic issues raised by this development include the formation of competitive advantages by promoting standards or preventing their diffusion. In Sect. 1 of this chapter, we discuss the economic interpretation of standards from a descriptive perspective by drawing on the closely related issue of positive network effects, which induce a self-enhancing cycle and lead to a widespread adoption of the standard. In Sect. 2, we highlight standards setting as a competitive weapon for media companies. Standards act not only as a precondition for compatibility across technologies and systems, but can also be used to generate incompatibility and customer lock-in effects. Thus, we examine standardization strategies and tactics for horizontal competitors in the digital media industry. In Sect. 3, we view standards as a strategic instrument for cost reduction in media companies by describing a normative decision model for the economic selection of standards, referred to as the standardization problem.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

    Thomas Hess, Antonia Köster & Christian Matt

Authors
  1. Thomas Hess
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  2. Antonia Köster
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  3. Christian Matt
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Correspondence to Antonia Köster .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Visualisation and Interactive Media, Curtin University, Perth, West Australia, Australia

    Artur Lugmayr

  2. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Emilija Stojmenova

  3. University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Katarina Stanoevska

  4. School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Robert Wellington

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Hess, T., Köster, A., Matt, C. (2016). The Strategic Role of Communication Standards for Media Companies. In: Lugmayr, A., Stojmenova, E., Stanoevska, K., Wellington, R. (eds) Information Systems and Management in Media and Entertainment Industries. International Series on Computer Entertainment and Media Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49407-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49407-4_4

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