Classification of B2B electronic marketplaces: a relational approach

Abstract

The internet is not a mere alternative channel for marketing or selling products online, instead electronic marketplaces enable buyers and sellers to innovate whole business processes from sourcing, production to customer service. These changes will significantly impact business-to-business interactions and relationships as it offers new ways of collaborating across organizational boundaries (paragraph 3.1). After discussing the new developments in E-business a clear definition of B2B E-commerce is developed (paragraph 3.2). Then the author shows the variety of B2B electronic marketplace characteristics by grouping them into four dimensions (paragraph 3.3). In paragraph 3.4 a literature overview is given. Then the most commonly used portfolio models for characterizing B2B electronic marketplaces are discussed (paragraph 3.5). Based on the given variety of electronic marketplaces and the different assumed effects on relationships, a systematic approach to classify electronic marketplaces from a relationship perspective is developed (paragraph 3.6).