Coopetition in infomediation : General analysis and application to e-tourism

Since the economic and managerial fields integrated the Internet tool, new opportunities were created. Among them, information management aiming at helping to make the "best choices" became a central topic in e-management. New types of intermediaries appeared in the virtual world as 'interorganizational information systems'. Actors who join these systems and take part in the development of these virtual commercial places play an atypical game: on the one hand, they cooperate in the same virtual entity of reticular form and, on the other hand, they remain individually in competition with one another since they are in a common market with comparable goods and services. How should we address this competitive game? Our paper tries to answer this question by qualifying the collaboration of 'coopetition' between platform members and competition between various online platforms. Moreover, in order to avoid any confusion, we propose a distinction between 'electronic marketplaces' and 'online information platforms'. We apply our general analysis to the case of e-tourism.