in response to online competition, and Borders
Group outsourced its e-commerce activities to Ama-
zon.com. Barnes & Noble tried to imitate Amazon
but failed to take advantage of its physical stores’
presence and its existing sales successes. Internet re-
tailing had positive impacts on some business activi-
ties, such as the streamlining of customer service in
the areas of ordering, billing, and supplying custom-
ers with products in an efficient manner.
Some economists have speculated that the dot-
com frenzy of the 1990’s contributed to the boom in
the housing and real estate market in the United
States in the early twenty-first century because that
market became the last vestige for speculative trad-
ing opportunities. However, on the downside, the
companies that expected to build brand names and
charge profitable rates at a later time failed to de-
liver on this promise. The U.S. Securities and Ex-
change Commission fined top investment groups
such as Citigroup and Merrill Lynch for misleading
investors. In 2000, more than two hundred Internet
companies folded, and the technical personnel who
had worked for those companies, especially com-
puter programmers, confronted a glutted job mar-
ket. Universities and colleges even began to see a
drop in the numbers of new students entering tech-
nology fields.
Further Reading
Cassidy, John.Dot.Con: The Greatest Stor y Ever Sold.
New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Economics
writer forThe New Yorkerrecounts the hype be-
hind the 1990’s dot-com bubble and places blame
on the news media, business policy makers, and
politicians for creating hysteria about the new
economy movement.
Clark, Peter J., and Stephen Neill.Net Value: Valuing
Dot-Com Companies: Uncovering the Reality Behind the
Hype. New York: AMACOM, 2001. Delves into the
dot-com phenomenon with a large dose of hu-
mor, analyzing the downfall itself and the subse-
quent repercussions for investors and the econ-
omy as well as the impact of Internet commerce
on goods and services for consumers.
Epstein, Mark J.Implementing E-Commerce Strategies: A
Guide to Corporate Success After the Dot-Com Bust.
Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Discusses strate-
gies for implementing successful management
systems and organizational designs in e-com-
merce after the failure of the dot-coms.
Goldfarb, Brent, David Kirsch, and David A. Miller.
“Was There Too Little Entry During the Dot Com
Era?” Journal of Financial Economics86, no. 1
(2007): 100-144. Contends that venture capital-
ists were too eager to enter the dot-com market in
an effort to get rich quick, causing overly focused
investments in just a few Internet start-ups that re-
sulted in too little entry.
Litan, Robert E., and Alice M. Rivlin.Beyond the
Dot.Coms: The Economic Promise of the Internet. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.
Summarizes the findings of the Brookings Task
Force on the economic impact of the Internet on
productivity growth in business endeavors even
after the dot-com bubble burst. Concludes that
the benefits of the Internet should not always be
associated with the failures of dot-com firms.
Lowenstein, Roger.Origins of the Crash: The Great Bub-
ble and Its Undoing. New York: Penguin Books,- A financial journalist examines and inter-
prets the new era boom-and-bust economy of the
1990’s.
Nataraj, Sam, and Jim Lee. “Dot-Com Companies:
Are They All Hype?S.A.M. Advanced Management
Journal67, no. 3 (Summer, 2002): 10-15. Evalu-
ates the strategies of “pure play” (Internet only)
companies versus those “brick and mortar” busi-
nesses that continue to have physical store loca-
tions but expanded into e-commerce during the
1990’s.
Razi, Muhammad A., J. Michael Tarn, and Faisal A.
Siddiqui. “Exploring the Failure and Success of
DotComs.”Information Management and Computer
Security12, no. 3 (2004): 228-244. Presents a de-
tailed study of the causes of dot-com failures and
successes. Concludes that successful Internet
companies were able to overcome operational,
technical, and organizational weaknesses to revo-
lutionize customer support while influencing
Web design and security issues.
Schneider, Gary P.New Perspectives on E-Commerce:
Comprehensive. Boston: Course Technology, 2002.
Explains strategies for designing and implement-
ing a successful e-commerce company.
Tokic, Damir. “What Went Wrong with the Dot-
Coms?”Journal of Investing11, no. 2 (Summer,
2002): 52-57. Analyzes the investment approach
to the evaluation of Internet shares and pricing
structures during the dot-com era.
Gayla Koerting
The Nineties in America Dot-coms 269