Criteria for the Evaluation of Product Categories for Successful Transactions on Internet-Based Business-to-Business Marketplaces: An Exploratory Study with mondus.de GmbH

Diplomarbeit von Matthias Herfert

Abstract:

The Internet plays an important role of today’s management decision-making. Great opportunities have to be weighted against investments into knowledge, technology, and organizational restructuring. Often, great uncertainty is involved because of rapidly changing technologies and mutual dependence of transaction parties on each other’s degree of technology adoption. The main advantage of electronically performed activities is its improved efficiency. In the past, business-to-business applications have been based on specific investments of individual firms that attempted to gain competitive advantages from proprietary electronic data interchange (EDI). However, investments were huge and flexibility was very limited. Nowadays, Internet technologies allow for global reach, ubiquity, and improved efficiency at reduced asset specificity. One business application of Internet technologies is the independent business-to-business Internet-based marketplace (IBMP), on which buyers and sellers can perform service, product, information, and money transactions. Due to the early stage of technology adoption, the suitability of specific IBMP-transactions is often unclear and all those actors involved have to make strategic decisions concerning the way in which future product transactions will be performed. With the help of this thesis, buyers, sellers, and marketplace providers can evaluate the transactional suitability of product categories. Such an evaluation is of particular importance to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME). They often lack automation and economies of scale. Therefore, the potential of improved efficiency through Internet technologies is here especially high. An exploratory study with the IBMP mondus has allowed for an empirical testing of selected evaluation criteria within selected product categories. The final results of the application explain the complexity of the decision situation and the remaining uncertainty due to the early stage of technology adoption.

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