Analysis of B2B e-marketplaces: an operations perspective

摘要: The phenomenon of business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces has triggered a lot interest among researchers in recent years. Most these studies focus on price competition or cost reduction. Few studies, however, have examined the impact participants’ supply chain operations, including inventory management and order fulfillment. This study aims to fill such gap. Employing agent-based simulations, we find that network agents tend keep more inventories backlog/lose fewer orders e-marketplace than traditional chains. And this effect is profounder for upstream agents, i.e., distributors manufacturers downstream retailers. Managerial implications findings are discussed.