In the current electronic-commerce literature, a commercial transaction is commonly viewed as an exchange between two autonomous principals operating under a contract between them— which needs to be formalized and enforced. But the situation can be considerably more complex in the case of inter-enterprise (also called business-to-business, or B2B) commerce. The participants in a B2B transaction...

Platforms can obtain sizable returns by operationally managing their market thickness, i.e., the availability of supply-side inventory. Using data from a natural experiment on a major B2B auction platform specializing in the $424 billion secondary market for liquidating retail merchandise, we find that thickening the platform’s market by consolidating the ending times of auctions to certain wee...

Do firms derive economic returns from business-to-business (B2B) initiatives? How do returns to startup firms compare to those for established firms in B2B initiatives? How do returns to B2B initiatives around digital goods compare to those involving tangible goods? We offer a rigorous definition of B2B then conduct an empirical test of incomplete contract theory to examine the returns to B2B e...

Designing electronic markets is a difficult task. Due to the complexities inherent to the design, the approach of market engineering provides a structured engineering process that divides the design process into phases and recommends methods to solve the tasks within the single design phases. This paper introduces the tool workbench CAME for designing electronic markets. The workbench supports ...

This paper presents results from a longitudinal study on the use of ICT for B2B-related business processes in large Swiss companies. In an empirical survey, 68 questionnaires were personally collected from procurement heads and subsequently analysed. The study was initiated by industry partners who wanted to gain more detailed knowledge about the maturity of e-procurement in the Swiss market. B...

We present an economic model that enables the study of incentives for business-to-business (B2B) e-procurement systems investments which permit inventory coordination and improved operational control. We focus on the information technology (IT) adoption behavior of firms in the presence of transaction costs, agency costs and information uncertainty. We conclude that it is appropriate to rethink...

Buero-Fuerrer is a company that decided to implement a modern e-procurement solution for B2B customers in the industry of office supplies. The company was looking for an e-commerce software solution for the seamless integration of the procurement process for its business customers. The main objective was the development of a customized software solution which would have a major impact on custom...

Firms are increasingly using the Web to conduct inter-organizational business transactions. This type of effort, popularly known as “business-to-business” (B2B) electronic commerce (e-commerce) has caught the attention of researchers and practitioners. Although there is a widespread adoption of B2B applications, there is very little empirical research that has attempted to investigate this phen...