Many business-to-business electronic marketplaces (EMs) are now offering collaboration functionalities, but the collaboration concept in an EM context has not been studied systematically. This paper is a preliminary effort to explore and categorise the different types of collaboration functionalities that may be offered by EMs. By surveying websites, we identified five types of horizontal collaboration (buying groups) and four kinds of vertical supply chain collaboration in EMs. Our findings suggest that supply chain collaboration tends to be supported more than buying groups by existing EMs, and a high percentage of EMs now offers supply chain coordination and integration. Among online buying groups, the exchange-catalogue model is the most popular, possibly since it puts fewer burdens on members and coordinators.
Internet-based business-to-business electronic marketplaces (EMs) are “open electronic platforms facilitating activities related to transactions and interactions between multiple companies”( Holzmuller and Schluchter, 2002). EMs have evolved from pure competitive markets that support buyer/seller aggregation, to supporting transactions, and finally to support integration and collaboration among firms with existing business relationships ( Ganesh, 2004). Nowadays, most EMs support a portfolio of relationships to cater to different purchasing strategies ( Grieger and Kotzab, 2002; Skjot-Larsen et al., 2003; Bartezzaghi and Ronchi, 2004; Eng, 2004; Wang and Archer, 2005). For some EMs, supporting aggregation has become a necessity, while supporting collaboration and integration is their main source of revenue and competitive advantage.
Although there is a vast literature from different disciplines on inter-institutional collaboration, collaboration in the EM context has not been studied systematically. The purpose of this paper is to explore such collaboration, at different levels. In its broadest sense, joining an EM is called “collaborative commerce”, regardless of whether business participants trade through arms-length market relationships or through long-term relationships (Barratt and Rosdahl, 2002). In this sense, all EMs are collaborative initiatives. Some EMs have been collaborative initiatives by big industry players, such as Quadrem in the mining industry. These collaborations have been limited to sharing an EM infrastructure, but not purchasing and sales. We will explore how firms can collaborate in purchasing through EMs; otherwise our conclusion would be that all EMs are collaborative initiatives. This conclusion is obvious and offers few implications. Our exploration has the objective of addressing the specific research question of enumerating the existing forms of buyer/seller purchasing collaboration through EMs, and constructing a categorisation framework that reflects these forms of collaboration.
The paper is organised as follows. First, a literature review includes the concept of EMs, collaboration, and EM collaboration. Second, different forms of EM collaboration offerings are identified, based on a survey of 134 EM websites. The forms of collaboration identified will answer our research question. Third, we compare and explain our classifications in relation to the previous literature, and finally we outline the potential for future research on this topic.
Our exploration of EMs has found five types of buying groups and four types of supply chain collaboration that were supported by existing EMs. Ordered from high to low by their frequency in this survey, the five types of EM-buying groups were exchange-catalogue, dealer-type, exchange-negotiation, supplier-initiated, and buyer-initiated buying groups. The exchange-catalogue model seems to be the most popular because it puts fewer burdens on members and coordinators. Supply chain collaboration appears to be more fully supported by EMs than are buying groups. Again, ordered from high to low by their frequency in this survey, the four types of supply chain collaboration were collaborative fulfillment, supply chain coordination and integration, private catalogue, and product life cycle management.
This research contributes to the theory of collaboration by providing a preliminary classification of EM collaboration, and by building a foundation for further empirical examination. EM operators should also consider the strategic importance of offering value through collaboration functionality beyond simple aggregation, especially in exchange-catalogue type of online group purchasing, collaborative fulfillment, and supply chain coordination and integration. Competition among operators may render the current popular collaboration functionalities strategic necessities. Operators should also focus on improvements to other types of strategic collaboration offerings.
Due to the limitations of our research methods, which relied on secondary information drawn from EM websites, a more comprehensive primary data survey of both EMs and participants would be needed to develop more statistically valid conclusions.
