A Framework for Identifying B2B E-Marketplace Strategies

Business-to-Business(B2B) ecommerce has been in existence ever since GM introduced Electronic Data Interchange in the 1980’s as a technology to do business with its suppliers (Premkumar, 2003). The utilization of the Internet for business paved the way for web-based B2B. The arena in which B2B commerce takes place is called an Electronic Marketplace (EM). B2B is a more significant component of e-commerce than B2C and correspondingly of more interest. While there are different perspectives of interest in this area, such as technological innovations, information visibility etc., this research focuses on EM strategies or approaches by B2B companies towards E-commerce business. We define this as selection of parameters of an EM such as participants, market-mechanisms, fee-structure etc. For most practical purposes, it boils down to the selection of a market mechanism. The failure of many B2B companies following the dot.com bust underscores the need for such study. There must be a framework for practitioners to identify successful B2B strategies and to position their organizations effectively within the full range of strategies (Chatterjee & Ravichandran, 2004). The topic is thus of importance to IS researchers. While literature in the area is still relatively sparse, a number of researchABSTRACT