Critical Mass Attainment in E-Business Trading Communities

I research about critical mass attainment in e-business trading communities. The term “critical mass attainment” here denotes the boundary of my study. The term “trading community” is defined by not just the market place host, but also by buyers, sellers, potential participants and other related actors (e.g. standards organizations). Critical mass theory is my underlying research logic. The theory formalizes “why a small sample of the population chooses to make big contribution to collective action while the majority does little or nothing” (Oliver et al. 1985). I view trading communities as a collective good. Thos who join in and contribute to trade during the infancy stages of a trading community are assumed to make a big contribution. My research thus aims to differentiate those who joined and participated in a trading community earlier from those who did latter. The differentiation is not only made in terms of just characteristics such as size and purchasing volume but also in terms of joining rationale. I assume that a trading community attaining critical mass is due to satisfied buyers and sellers. My research results would help trading communities in improving their marketing effectiveness and trading partners in evaluating a trading community. I do a positivist case study research. Unstructured interviews is my primary research method. Two initiatives that I study are Gatetrade and IBX marketplaces. The first is Government to Business (G2B) and the second is Business to Business (B2B) in nature. The following are two examples of relationships that I have identified based on 25 interviews that I have so far conducted. i) A trading partner’s commitment to an e-biz community is directly related to asset specific investments that he or she has made for joining. ii) An organization would more likely trade through an E-biz community when its purchasing practices within an organization are centralized instead of decentralized.