The Roles of Online Intermediaries in Collective Memory-Supported Electronic Negotiation

Following the emergence of the Internet, electronic negotiation has become an alternative to face-to-face negotiation. The rise of websites such as electronic marketplaces or electronic brokerages also fueled the popularity of electronic negotiation. The current forms of negotiation support systems (NSS) used to support many electronic negotiations offer very little support for historical negotiation data. In order to address this issue, the idea of a collective memory support in negotiations has been proposed in recent years. This paper highlights the use of an online intermediary as an effective location from which collective memory support can be offered. The paper proposes that an intermediary based collective memory support will increase confidence in negotiation, reduce overall negotiation time, and strengthen trust between negotiators. IntroductIon The emergence of the Internet has welcomed thriving electronic commerce as evidenced by the rising trend of both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) trade. Both B2B and B2C transactions were expected to be over $7 trillion annually by 2005 (Grover and Teng, 2001). By 2006, 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies were expected to increase their investments in e-commerce to draw new customers and increase customer satisfaction rather than reduce the cost of sales (Sarner, 2004). This has convinced that the emergence of the Internet not only supports electronic transactions, but also acts as the platform through which services to businesses and customers are delivered (Kim, Jayaraman, and Rao, 2003). One of the emerging business enterprises to facilitate electronic transactions among parties is online intermediaries or e-marketplaces which have DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-831-4.ch017