The Theory and Development of a Relationship Matrix-based Approach to Evaluating e-Marketplaces

The process of joining an electronic marketplace (e-marketplace), and the evaluation of which particular ones offer the most suitable mix of services for a particular business, is not a straightforward undertaking. With a myriad of variants on offer, and with the numerous membership models, features, services, functionality, product types, and technology platforms in existence, it can prove to be a very confusing process for any prospective company looking to join. For that reason this paper take steps toward developing an effective, intuitive, and user friendly mechanism for assisting in e-marketplace selection, to be employed by practitioners looking to either subscribe to existing e-marketplaces or examining the prospect of developing a bespoke e-marketplace of their own. The investigation describes two case studies, one depicting the development of an e-marketplace, by an SME in the UK, and the other describing a set of three new classification models derived after analysis of the wider global e-marketplace domain. These findings are then employed, and utilized as inputs, in the development of a QFD-based matrix approach for evaluating e-marketplace suitability.