Coalitional Added Services in a Linear Neutral e-Marketplace: An Approach Based on the Shapley Value

Abstract

The increase of transactions by electronic commerce (e-commerce) in Business to Business applications has a constant trend during last years. Many research reports have focused on negotiation and auction mechanisms in this context, but a smaller number of related research attempts, has chosen to develop coalition approaches This research attempt tries to overcome this gap by an innovative coalition model for a private neutral linear e-marketplace that combines a full integration between customer’s request and supplier’s planning activity. The Shapley value approach is proposed to manage the profit sharing activity among the coalition participants. The Shapley value is an approach of game theory used to share a gain in coalition games. A proper simulation environment has been designed and modeled in order to measure the “stay-together economy” achievable within the proposed innovative e-marketplace. The simulation results highlight how the proposed approach increases the performance level of the e-marketplace: specifically the suppliers gain more benefits than the customers through the possibility of establishing coalitions