Paper info

Electronic B2B Marketplaces - Impact on B2B Transactions and Relationships?

Evi Hartmann , Hans Georg Gemuenden, Kerstin Oppel and Michael Lingenfelder

The paper was published at the 17th IMP-conference in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

The last two years have seen a rapid development of the use of the Internet in doing economictransactions (E-Commerce). Now that the euphoria has subsided, it is necessary to closely examinewhich E-Commerce applications will remain and why. Our paper will focus on Electronic B2BMarketplaces. We first define and classify this category of e-commerce and present the valuegenerating models deployed. Drawing on transaction cost and information economics, the paperexamines which kind of B2B transactions so far benefit from being conducted over Electronic B2BMarketplaces and why. We hypothesize that the prevalent business models employed by currentElectronic B2B Marketplaces support transactions that are governed in market structures, exploitingthe electronic brokerage effect. Thus, Electronic B2B Marketplaces have not had any significantimpact on existing B2B relationships. In fact, our theoretical analysis suggests that transactions donewithin strong existing relationships have not been very likely to move to Electronic B2B Marketplaces.Electronic B2B Marketplaces will need to provide further value generating services to attract thesetransactions. Such services include providing relevant and qualified information to reduce uncertaintyin transactions, especially for goods and services with mainly experience or credence qualities. Otherservices may include providing new business applications for collaboration.