Electronic intermediaries play an important role in many Web-based electronic markets, adding value for participants by offering services such as matchmaking and trust. This paper presents an economic model of intermediation where the intermediary offers services to two types of actors: consumers and providers. When consumers are heterogeneous, differentiated on their willingness to pay for int...

Online auctions have demonstrated how e-commerce can transform business, and not merely transplanting conventional processes to a new medium. The resulting emergence and growth of diverse markets pose the intriguing question of what ‘shape’ a given market is in at a particular moment of development. The approach of Topological Analysis, which is based on the Star Plot method in data visualizati...

Information technology enabled exchanges in electronic markets have significant implications for buyer–supplier relaVivek Choudhury was the accepting senior editor for this paper. tionships. Building on studies that emphasize the role of intangible assets in interorganizational relationships, this study argues that buyers are less likely to use reverse auctions for supplier relationships involv...

Price dispersion is an important indicator of market efficiency. Internet-based electronic markets have the potential to reduce transaction costs, thereby creating more efficient, “frictionless” markets, as predicted by the “law of one price”. However, prior work has reported significant levels of price dispersion on the Internet, which is in contrast with theoretical predictions. A key feature...

Electronic markets facilitate the trade of various products between individual traders. Both, the products’ individual characteristics and the market participants preferences make specific demands on the market model. This results in trading identical products in different markets. The concept of combining market models allows the traders to participate in many markets parallel and/or sequentia...

AUCNET is famous worldwide as one of the pioneers that developed an electronic market for used cars. It uses a unique satellite auction system. In 1985, AUCNET entered successfully the used-car market in Japan. In that period the used-car market was booming, so AUCNET could easily introduce their market system and could overcome the resistance from the traditional market. After a while AUCNET a...

Electronic marketplaces are an upcoming model for business-to-business electronic commerce. In electronic marketplaces, companies can offer their services and products. Other companies can search for products in the marketplace to find new business partners. Once contact between two business partners has been established, a negotiation starts in order to reach a formal agreement on their busine...

Market design is becoming a very important research topic in the context of the electronic economy. Two factors explain this trend: (1) the creation of new markets to facilitate deregulation (telecommunication frequencies, electric power, etc.) and (2) the emergence of strategic analysis and of experimental economics. E-commerce tools will contribute to the emergence of more structured marketpl...

The rapid growth of the Internet and electronic commerce stimulates new digital innovations. Electronic markets can influence both adoption and diffusion processes of digital innovations in significant ways. The difficulties for market transactions of information goods and the change from free to paid content on websites in the last years has led to research questions about how individuals deci...

Two alternative trading mechanisms for securities markets are compared using laboratory experimentation and computer simulation. One mechanism is the floor-based specialist auction in place in most U.S. stock exchanges today, and the other is an electronic alternative employing automatic order matching. We conclude that transition from the established floor-based exchanges to potentially superi...