Since Micheal Porter's popularization of value chain analysis in the mid 1980's, a common theme is analyzing margins along a chain (from raw materials to consumer) to determine where margins are highest and why. For example, Wal Mart is widely seen as controlling a large chunk of the retail value chain (although they're a bit of an anomaly since they've used their influence to increase market share instead of earning well-above-average margins)....similar in some ways to the influence Sears wielded when retailing was dominated by department stores.
As SaaS, PaaS, etc. swirls in the Web 2.0 world, this topic is beginning to emerge in considering the value chains traditional IT supports and enables. This post by Josh Greenbaum is a nice recent discussion of the topic as applied to the Salesforce.com market. Control of value chains/nets would seem to be inherently more difficult to achieve and hold in the information domain, but the potential opportunity/risk means that a lot of maneuvering is inevitable.
If you're unfamiliar with value chain analysis, this link provides a short intro.
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