Business-to-Business E-Commerce and Service Science: Building a Service Dominant Logic-Based Reference Model

The rise of the Internet and various information and communication technologies have opened up possibilities for businesses to grow and expand through the World Wide Web. Many businesses thus have started to engage in online business-to-business (B2B) transactions. However, though B2B e-marketplaces produced an early excitement from industry verticals, there have been many challenges which led to failure of some B2B systems. Various literature discuss many reasons for the lack of success. Reasons vary but it is contended that the goods dominant logic (GDL) hypothesized to be used in building those e-marketplaces contributed to this. Thus, it is proposed that a shift to the emerging service dominant logic (SDL) would solve the problems caused by the GDL, resulting to B2B e-marketplaces having greater success. Business-to-consumer (B2C) systems have made moves to implement SDL but little research has been done for the B2B sector. This paper attempts to fill that gap and presents an SDL-based reference model useful for B2B e-marketplaces. Keywords-E-business, Business-to-Business E-commerce, Service Dominant Logic, Reference Models