Assurance Services for Business-to- Business Electronic Commerce: A Framework and Implications

The electronic commerce assurance market has been estimated to be potentially worth $11 billion. To date, the focus of assurance services has largely been on web commerce (and, therefore, business-to-consumer or B2C) related services, leaving the business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce market relatively untapped. Yet, with electronic data interchange (EDI) being mandated by large companies and government agencies, smallto medium-sized firms have struggled to acquire and implement this technology with little understanding of this new age of electronic commerce. As the ubiquitous Internet allows more firms to become EDI-