Page 125 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

4.1 Concepts, Characteristics, and Models of B2B E-Commerce 105

a Buyers b Sellers

Company A Company A
Company B Company B

Company C Company C
Seller Buyer
Company D Company D
Sell-Side B2B Buy-Side B2B

c Services d Others
Government Buyers
Sellers Buyers
Shippers Hub
Manager Sellers
Community Company
An Exchange Technology Payments
Providers Industry
Universities associations

Electronic Exchange Supply Chain Improvements and
Collaborative Commerce

Figure 4.2 Five types of B2B e-commerce

Collaboration and increased use of intelligent systems. In addition, the
Businesses deal with other businesses for purposes beyond sixth generation is capitalizing on mobile computing, espe-
just selling or buying. One example is that of collaborative cially tablets and smartphones.
commerce, which includes communication, joint design, The B2B field is very diverse, depending on the industry,
planning, and information sharing among business partners products and services transacted, volume, method used, and
(see Section 4.9). more. The diversity can be seen in Figure 4.4 where we dis-
tinguish five major components: Our company, which may
be manufacturer, retailer, service provider, and so forth, is
Market Size and Content of B2B shown in the center. It has suppliers (on the left) and retailers
(on the right). Our company operations are supported by dif-
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates B2B online sales to be ferent services (bottom), and we may work with several
about 40% of the total B2B volume depending on the type intermediaries (top of Figure 4.4). The solid lines show the
(e.g., 49% in manufacturing). Chemicals, computer elec- flow of information.
tronics, utilities, agriculture, shipping and warehousing,
motor vehicles, petrochemicals, paper and office products,
and food are the leading items in B2B. According to the B2B Components
authors’ experience and several sources, the dollar value of
B2B comprises at least 85% of the total transaction value of Next, we present various components of B2B commerce.
all e- commerce, and in some countries, it is over 90% for a
total of about $20 trillion worldwide. For statistics, see Parties to the Transaction: Sellers, Buyers,
Pick (2015). and Intermediaries
B2B EC is now in its sixth generation, as shown in Figure
4.3. This generation includes collaboration with suppliers, B2B commerce can be conducted directly between a cus-
buyers, government, and other business partners via exten- tomer and a manufacturer or it can be conducted via an
sive use of mobile computing; use of blogs, wikis, and other online intermediary. An online intermediary is a third- party
Web 2.0 tools; deployment of in-house social networks; use entity that brokers the transactions between the buyer and
of public social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook; seller; it can be either virtual or click-and-mortar. Some of