Electronic Reverse Auctions: Spawning Procurement Innovation in the Context of Arab Culture

Government e-procurement initiatives have the potential to transform local institutions, but few studies have been published of strategies for implementing specific e-procurement tools, particularly involving procurement by a foreign government adapting to local culture in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA). This case describes procurement at a forward operating base (FOB) in Kuwait in support of operations in Iraq. The government procurers had to deal with a phenomenon unique to the MENA region: wasta. Wasta is a form of social capital that bestows power, influence, and connection to those who possess it, similar to guanxi in China. This study explores the value proposition and limitations of electronic reverse auctions (eRA) with the purpose of sharing best practices and lessons learned for government procurement in a MENA country. The public value framework provides valuable theoretical insights for the implementation of a new government e-procurement tool in a foreign country. In a culture dominated by wasta, the suppliers enjoyed the transparency and merit-based virtues of eRA’s that transferred successfully into the new cultural milieu: potential to increase transparency, competition, efficiency, and taxpayer savings. The practices provided herein are designed specifically to help buyers overcome structural barriers including training, organizational inertia, and a lack of eRA policy and guidance while implementing a new e-procurement tool in a foreign country

Choosing between Auctions and Negotiations in Online B2B Markets for IT Services: The Effect of Prior Relationships and Performance

The choice of contract allocation mechanism in procurement affects such aspects of transactions as information exchange between buyer and supplier, supplier competition, pricing and, eventually, performance. In this study we investigate the buyer’s choice between reverse auctions and bilateral negotiations as an allocation mechanism for IT services contracts. Prior studies into allocation mechanism choice focused on factors pertaining to discrete exchange situation, such as con-tract complexity or availability of suppliers. We broaden the research by focusing on buyers’ past exchange relationships with vendors. Based on the literature on the economics of contracting and agency theory, we hypothesize that prior re-peat interaction with vendors favors the use of negotiations over auctions in the next transaction, while the need to explore the marketplace due to buyer’s inexperience or dissatisfaction with vendor’s performance in the most recent project leads to the use of auctions instead of negotiations. We find support for these hypotheses in a longitudinal dataset of 2,081 IT projects realized by 91 repeat buyers at a leading online services marketplace over a period of eight years. Taken together, the results show that analyzing B2B auctions and negotiations should move beyond analyzing discrete instances and instead analyze them in the context of the individual firm’s history and supplier strategy.outsourcing;IT services;online marketplace;reverse auctions

New technologies for e-commerce

Today electronic commerce (e-commerce) has changed the way of doing business, and contributes significantly to economic activity. In any case, e-commerce is not a static field but it is always evolving in order to support new and more complex real world processes. The agriculture sector is expected to undergo significant transformation as a result of new business models being adopted through ecommerce. Examples of the adoption of new technologies in agriculture are provided with a view to demonstrating the benefits that can be achieved. The first part I expound the basics of e-commerce and e-markets. After I describe potential benefits to agriculture from adoption of e-commerce. The last part I describe the ecommerce 2.0, what is a prospect evolution of e-commerce

Online Reverse Auctions: who benefits?

The use of auctions as a tool for procurement by businesses existed well before the advent of the Internet. Initially the Internet was used to duplicate existing offline auction facilities. In the late 1990’s online B2B auctions were proliferating and were being adopted in a wide variety of circumstances. The reverse auction tool has evolved to take advantage of Internet technology and online auctions have been identified by many large organisations as a tool to achieve procurement savings. As companies adopt this technology it is important for them to understand the implications of this type of procurement. This paper adopts a case study approach to identify the issues for both buyers and sellers using this type of B2B application. It describes the conduct of a reverse auction, from the preliminary steps all the way to the final awarding of the contract. The case study is viewed through the eyes of a supplier undertaking a reverse auction for the first time. The main outcomes show that the auction vendor and buyer were major winners with the supplier expending considerable time and effort to participate in the auction only to realise that the auction places cost above all other factors in awarding the contract. The importance of cost over service delivery, customer support and buyer-supplier relationship was the bitter pill the supplier had to swallow

Online reverse auctions research in marketing versus SCM: A review and future directions

An online reverse auction (ORA) is a dynamic procurement mechanism that allows suppliers to compete in real time via a platform to gain a buyer’s business. The ORA is a technological tool introduced in the late 1990s, gaining proponents and detractors among practitioners and academics. Remarkably, while practitioner interestin ORAs has grown, related marketing and supply chain management (SCM) research has declined. This contradiction between theory and practice suggests the need to conduct a systematic review to provide readers with a state-of-the-art understanding of ORAs and recommend fruitful avenues for further research. We focus on the marketing literature and contrast the findings with SCM literature, in such an analysis practical relevance is stressed. Our study offers three main contributions: (1) integration of the cumulative marketing knowledge on ORAs in the 2002–2020 period, (2) development of a three-layer framework of the ORA domain (i.e., conceptualization, ORA as a process, and research setting), and (3) construction of a new research agenda to deal with scholarly challenges and emerging trends.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. GPC ED431B 2022/10Universidade de Vigo/CISU

Benchmarking the Complementary Features of Online Auction Sites – A Survey

The functionalities required for successful deployment and operation of online auction site can be broadly classified into two categories: core features and complementary features. Core features are essential for the existence of a site, whereas complementary features enhance a users experience with the site. Since a site has to have the core features, it is the complementary features that contribute to the popularity of the auction sites. We have conducted a survey of 100 auction sites to study 23 features. We found out the similarities among these sites based on their feature vectors. Three distinct groups are formed in the process. The groups are found to be distinct with respect to the core features. We also compared the complementary features of these sites. The results of the chi square tests revealed that the groups do differ with respect to most of these features. We propose a model to assign weights to the features distinctly for three auction site categories. Pareto analyses show important features that contribute to eighty percent of the weights in each group. We next define Site Evaluation Index based on these weights. The analysis shows that the sites with higher site evaluation index are indeed the popular ones, as per their ranking in the results of search engines. The highest scored sites can serve as a benchmark to choose the value adding complementary features to guide the upcoming auction sites

E-COMMERCE IN AGRICULTURE: DEVELOPMENT, STRATEGY, AND MARKET IMPLICATIONS

Marketing,

From e-trash to e-treasure: how value can be created by the new e-business models for reverse logistics

Reverse logistics, that is, all operations related to the reuse of used products, excess inventory and packaging materials, gain increasing attention globally both for their promising financial potentials, the sustainable growth alternative they offer and the environmental positive impact they have. In this paper, we introduce reverse logistics and we explain how the adoption of e-commerce provides new possibilities to existing business models and what are the new e-business models in reverse logistics that have emerged. We compare these three new e-business models, namely, returns aggregators, specialty locators and integrated solution providers on a number of aspects and identify keys for their competitive advantage. Finally, we discuss conceptual and actual opportunities for these e-business models to thrive and advance and present some e-commerce tools that are being developed with the aim to address the distributed, dynamic and knowledge-intensive aspects of applications that contribute to the advancement of e-businesses in the field of reverse logistics.e-commerce;Reverse logistics;e-business models