E-Business, also called digital business, has an increasingly recurring role in daily transaction facilitation in marketing channels and dyadic trading relationships. These developments imply that the findings of this thesis are more relevant than ever. Managers in various positions need to deeply understand the mutual interrelations between marketing and IT use conditions.

The thesis aims at answering two research questions:

RQ 1: What are the conditions influencing e-Business system implementation processes?

RQ 2: What e-Business-enabled performance effects result from e-Business system use, and how does the use of e-Business systems affect dyadic performance?

The thesis comprises five case studies focusing on different e-Business forms in four Swedish marketing channel contexts. The five empirical studies were conducted in different contexts (B2B, B2G and B2C), exploring different levels of analysis, and span across a 20-year period, from 1988 to 2008.

A literature review was conducted after the five case studies were published. Knowledge and findings identified from mainly the relationship view and information systems literature were synthesised and applied to the five publications in retrospective.

The overall conclusion drawn from this thesis is the crucial importance of human success conditions. The degree of commitment and pro-active actions of human beings – individually and collectively among all stakeholders involved  – and their competencies decisively influence the degree to which the e-Business implementation and diffusion process will be successful, and in turn the business value outcomes that can be attained.