Designing Reverse Auctions for B-2-B Procurement - Evidence from the German Industry

At the end of the 1990s online reverse auctions were proposed as a powerful tool to improve the performance of corporate procurement. However, as many of the promises of the e-Business world failed to materialize the issue received only little attention during the last years. Hence, it is not known what kind of role reverse auctions play and what kind of auction designs are used in practice. For this reason, the following article tries to answer three questions regarding the actual use of auctions in corporate procurement: 1. To what extend will reverse auctions replace traditional sourcing negotiations within B2B procurement? 2. Which auction forms and auction designs are most appropriate for procurement auctions to ensure satisfactory results? 3. What kind of complex auctions forms such as combinatorial and multiattribute auctions are successfully applied for B2B procurement purposes?