Abstract
Advanced technologies have lowered the entry barriers of e-commerce (EC) industry. The level of customer satisfaction is considered to be an important factor that drives the growth rate of EC sales. Understanding and satisfying customer expectations for payment experiences critically important. Because the EC industry is still evolving, related payment services have to be adequately developed so as to meet the requirements of customers. The EC enterprises usually adopt electronic payment (e-payment) methods to settle financial transactions among merchants and customers. A successful e-payment service creates new business opportunities and requires patent protection to prevent infringement from competitors. This research develops a computer-assisted approach incorporating text-mining method to classify each patent and visualize patent portfolios using roadmaps to explore novelty and possible strategic information of EC enterprises. The framework first constructs the e-payment ontology and identifies the key term library of each ontology element by experts. The next step is to use computer-assisted method to extract key terms of each patent based on frequently appeared terms from primary and Derwent World Patent Index (DWPI) patent information. After key term extraction, this research matches each patent with the libraries and maps onto roadmaps to visualize patent portfolios. This research also employs patent value indicators to highlight the relative competitive advantages. By applying roadmapping and value assessment, the positions making enterprises outperform in the competitive EC environment can be identified and benchmarked. This research studies two leading EC operators in the US and Asia, i.e., Amazon and Alibaba, as a case study and uses their e-payment patents as input to implement the proposed analysis. The patent portfolios and analytical results underlying their competitive advantages and future business development implications are discussed.