WHAT DID SAP CHANGE? A MARKET SHAPING ANALYSIS

The market for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software was analysed in the contexts of computer science, business models and history. However, the impact of SAP which has driven the ERP market was not analysed in the framework of economic theories. Especially a new direction within marketing which aims to re-connect it to markets, can be an interesting point of departure for the analysis. The analysis is based on the business history of the software firm SAP as well as a theoretical framework. The point of view of the study is evolutionary economics, which focuses on the role of innovation and knowledge generation in an open loop evolving, non-pre-determined economic system. Findings suggest that SAP's impact was mainly on agency costs, transaction costs and network effects. These three points suggest a similarity to the market shaping impact of internet economics, put forward by Dholakia and coauthors(2002).