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We illustrate how multi-sided retail marketplaces enabled by a digital platform, engage suppliers, creating new rules of retail altogether. Specifically, we describe how these marketplaces create relational value for their suppliers, as through marketplaces like Amazon.com, suppliers are fully integrated members of the value-exchange relationship with the platform’s end-customers.

This paper is the result of a study of three leading marketplaces. We compared the marketplaces to understand the impact of the platform economy on the retail industry, including on the governance mechanisms and earnings logic. We identified supplier management as a key theme in our analysis, as on marketplaces such as Amazon.com, the management of supplier relationships differs from more traditional forms of retail, as in platforms, supplier quality reflects strongly on the reputation and reliability of the marketplace.

Our findings show that in addition to well-known customer engagement processes, the marketplaces also have supplier engagement processes in-place. Through engagement processes, marketplaces are able to lock-in suppliers, thus increasing the total value of the marketplace. For suppliers, marketplaces create relational value, in an industry where competition has traditionally centered on price, selection and location.

Thus far, studies have shown that companies differentiate through customer engagement. This paper looks at the same phenomena from the supplier side. We contribute to the understanding of complementor management in the platform economy. Based on our study, we expect that the novel concept of supplier engagement will transform how retailers interact with suppliers.

We explore the driving forces behind the channel choices of the manufacturer and the platform by considering asymmetric selling cost and demand information.

This paper develops game-theoretical models to study different channel strategies for an E-commerce supply chain, in which a manufacturer distributes products through a platform that may operate in either the marketplace channel or the reseller channel.

Three primary models are built and analyzed. The comparison results show that the platform would share demand information in the reseller channel only if the service cost performance is relatively high. Besides, with an increasing selling cost, the equilibrium channel might shift from the marketplace to the reseller. With increasing information accuracy, the manufacturer tends to select the marketplace channel, while the platform tends to select the reseller channel if the service cost performance is low and tends to select the marketplace channel otherwise.

All these results have been numerically verified in the experiments. At last, we also resort to numerical study and find that as the service cost performance increases, the equilibrium channel may shift from the reseller channel to the marketplace channel. These results provide managerial guidance to online platforms and manufacturers regarding strategic decisions on channel management.

Although prior research has paid extensive attention to the driving forces behind the online channel choice between marketplace and reseller, there is at present few study considering the case where a manufacturer selling through an online platform faces a demand information disadvantage in the reseller channel and sales inefficiency in the marketplace channel. To fill this research gap, our work illustrates the interaction between demand information asymmetry and selling cost asymmetry to identify the equilibrium channel strategy and provides useful managerial guidelines for both online platforms and manufacturers.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) involved in the production of natural essential oils can reduce market accessibility challenges by trading through electronic marketplaces (e-marketplaces). However, trust is a barrier that SMEs should overcome in order to successfully trade in e-marketplaces. The agricultural sector presents a unique challenge to the subject of trust and e-marketplaces. It is difficult for SMEs in the agricultural sector to provide the level of assurance of product quality that their buyers expect. Trust between buyers and sellers during the earliest stages of e-marketplace interaction can pave the way for future trust in a seller on an e-marketplace. Thus, this study uses the uncertainty reduction theory (URT) to investigate factors that could influence the initial trust and pave the way for future trust in a seller on e-marketplaces. This study assumes a qualitative research methodology in which a multiple-case study approach is adopted. The study focuses on SMEs that produce natural essential oils in South Africa. Open-ended interviews were conducted with companies involved in buying or selling natural essential oils in South Africa to determine the factors that influence their decision to buy or sell in an e-marketplace. Findings from data were used to inform the development of a model of trust in sellers of natural essential oils in e-marketplaces. The proposed model recommends trust factors that should be considered during the entry, personal, and exit phases of the URT. The model identifies common and unique trust factors that relate specifically to businesses trading natural essential oils on e-marketplaces. The study found that some SMEs face challenges in coming up with an effective model for selling agricultural produce on e-marketplaces. Hence, they often resort to face-to-face interaction when it comes to product inspection, especially when dealing with first-time buyers. However, this study presented measures put in place by other SMEs suggesting how such challenges could be addressed. Nevertheless, a lack of trust in technology remains a cause for concern to some SMEs selling natural essential oils.

After completing the case study, the students will be able to explore, create and capture the dilemmas of a platform strategy; compare, contrast and configure strategies for successful platform adoption; develop fitting configurations for marketplace design; and use temple framework to evaluate the dilemma of the element of time (do it sooner, delay for later or dismiss forever) in launching a new marketplace.

Shoppre was a parcel-forwarding firm established in 2017. In a short period, Shoppre turned out to be one of the best parcel forwarding and cross-border commerce companies in India, thanks to the first-mover advantage it enjoyed. Shoppre had offerings of shopping and shipping of cross-border e-commerce. As a new firm looking forward to increasing its market power, Shoppre faced the dilemma of whether to launch the marketplace, and if yes, whether to do it soon or delay it for the future. There was also confusion in the marketplace’s design and implementation. Nikkitha Shankar’s (she/her) worry was that if Shoppre did not decide quickly on this, there would be possible crises in managing the partners and their financial performance. Shankar was brainstorming the issues with the founding partner and was gauging the dimensions. This case study presented new marketplaces’ dilemmas along with managing sellers, customers, markets, finance, logistics and digital transformation.

The case study is suitable for undergraduate- and graduate-level students pursuing courses in business programmes and senior management professionals participating in executive education programmes. The case study will also fit well for courses such as the “Platform strategy: building and thriving in a vibrant ecosystem” course [1], digital business models [2] and digital business strategy [3].

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This study aims to explore the strategies that service providers use to facilitate marketplace accessibility, and identify the key challenges in that process. The authors do so to develop a roadmap towards improved accessibility and disability inclusion in the marketplace.

The authors conducted eight semi-structured interviews with service providers (curators, visitor service coordinators and access managers) at museums who run access programmes for customers with visual impairment (VI), along with an embodied duo-ethnography of those programmes.

Service providers foster autonomous, embodied and social access. Resource constraints, safety concerns and exposed differences between customers compromise access. To overcome these challenges, service providers engage in three inclusionary strategies – informing, extending and sensitizing.

This service provider- and VI-focus present limitations. Future research should consider a poly-vocal approach that includes the experiences of numerous stakeholders to holistically advance marketplace accessibility; and apply the marketplace accessibility findings upon different disabilities in other marketplace contexts.

This study offers a roadmap for policymakers and service providers on: which types of access should and can be created; what challenges may be encountered; how to manage these challenges; and, thus, how to advance accessibility beyond regulations.

This study contributes a service provider perspective on marketplace accessibility that goes beyond removing “disabling” barriers towards creating opportunities for co-creation; an approach towards marketplace accessibility that fosters inclusiveness while considering the inherent challenges of that process; and an illustration of posthumanism’s empirical value in addressing issues of accessibility in the marketplace.

Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) are internet-native self-governing enterprises where individual groups, communities, agencies, consumers and providers work together using blockchain-led smart contracts (SCs). This study aims to examine the role of DAO marketplaces in technology-led autonomous organisation design for enterprise technology sourcing industries, with algorithmic trust and governance.

The authors examined the importance of an enterprise marketplace governance platform for technology sourcing using DAO as a decentralised/democratised business model. A total of 98 DAO products/services are evaluated across 11 industries that envisage DAO as a strategic choice for the governance of decentralised marketplace platforms.

The research findings validate how a DAO-led enterprise marketplace governance platform can create a cohesive collaboration between consumers (enterprises) and providers (solution vendors) in a disintermediated way. The proposed novel layered solution for an autonomous governance-led enterprise marketplace promises algorithmic trust-led, self-governed tactical alternatives to a strategic plan.

The research targets multiple industry outlooks to understand decentralised autonomous marketplace governance and develop the theoretical foundation for research and extensive corporate suitability.

The research underpinnings boost the entrepreneurs’ ability to realise the practical potential of DAO between multiple parties using SCs and tokenise the entire product and service offerings over immutable ledger technologies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is unique and the first of its kind to study the multi-industry role of algorithmic trust and governance in enterprise technology sourcing marketplaces driven by 98 decentralised and consensus-based DAO products across 11 industries.

Subsistence marketplace can be characterized as a marketplace with widespread cognitive and social vulnerabilities, due to low income and low literacy levels. This may result in retailers exploiting the consumers. The purpose of this research paper is to develop a holistic learning program to impart marketplace intelligence to overcome these vulnerabilities of subsistence consumers.

Using vicious cycle approach, the authors illustrate the self-perpetuating nature of consumer vulnerabilities. The authors argue that retailers behave in an opportunistic manner and exploit the consumers. This further reinforces the vulnerabilities of subsistence consumers resulting in a vicious cycle. The authors draw insights from Sen’s capability approach and propose marketplace intelligence as a potential solution to eradicate consumers’ vulnerabilities. The authors apply Biggs’s 3Ps model to design a learning program to impart two types of marketplace intelligence – marketplace metacognition and marketplace social intelligence.

Based on a review of literature on subsistence marketplace initiatives, persuasive knowledge management and education research, the authors have devised a holistic learning program comprising an integrated learning environment (presage), problem-based approach (process) and assessment strategies for learning outcomes (product).

This study marks a pioneering effort toward liberating subsistence consumers from the vicious cycle of retailers’ exploitation by empowering them with marketplace intelligence. This study’s novelty lies in conceptualizing consumer vulnerabilities in the subsistence marketplace as a self-perpetuating phenomenon and subsequently designing a holistic learning program to impart intelligence toward alleviating these vulnerabilities.

This research paper aims to provide conceptual clarity for marketplaces within the lateral exchange market framework. The advances in digital technologies have been critical to the growth of new marketplaces and forms of exchange. While there are many different names and manifestations of these marketplaces, the common thread is they all require digital platform intermediation. These marketplaces are referred to by a variety of names and characteristics, and a clear consensus has yet to be achieved.

This research uses a conceptual approach rooted in the marketing literature.

This study differentiates and defines the sharing economy, collaborative consumption and access-based consumption, as well as introduces the concept of liquid ownership – all under the LEM framework. Defining characteristics for each marketplace are noted to present a consistent classification of the focal concepts for the advancement of research and theory.

As the number and types of lateral exchange marketplaces continue to grow, researchers need to have a clear delineation of the concepts. This research seeks to provide clarity on the disparate literature streams and introduces the concept of liquid ownership to allow for the advancement of research and theory surrounding these forms of consumption.

Understanding existing marketplaces is vital for online platforms as they develop new offerings and differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Additionally, opportunities for traditional businesses abound as they pursue new market opportunities and adapt to changing technologies. Thus, research questions concerning consumers and platform managers are presented.

This research contributes conceptual clarity on elements commonly associated with the sharing economy while expanding it to include elements found in LEMs. The concept of liquid ownership is also presented to reflect the evolving consumption landscape. Research opportunities and questions are provided to guide future scholarly work.

The research aims to qualitatively explore e-marketplace service quality (EMSQ) from the perspective of an industrial buyer as a sole decision-maker. It further intends to quantitatively examine its impact on the industrial buyer's perceived value (PV), overall satisfaction (SAT), and e-loyalty (ELOY) in the context of business-to-government (B2G) e-commerce.

The research used an exploratory sequential mixed-method design. A qualitative exploratory study of EMSQ was conducted using a Straussian grounded theory (GT) technique, followed by an explanatory quantitative study using PLS-SEM to evaluate causal links between various research variables.

In the area of e-services, the investigation found that the hierarchical structure of EMSQ encompasses six broadly applicable dimensions and one B2G context-specific dimension of the e-governance process quality. The study also reinforced previous research findings in the B2C and B2B e-commerce domains, highlighting that e-service quality positively impacts online buyer's PV, SAT and ELOY.

This research contributed to the area of e-service operations by developing and validating the EMSQ model in the B2G e-commerce settings. Further, it has opened up new research avenues in B2G e-commerce.

The findings from this research highlighted that e-service operations managers should focus on usability, technological concerns, product/vendor quality concerns, customer support reliability, along with effective e-governance, ordering and logistics processes for e-business success. It also provides policymakers with guidelines for making B2G e-marketplaces sustainable.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study employing the GT and PLS-SEM techniques to explore EMSQ from the viewpoint of industrial buyers in B2G e-commerce. The study contributed to prior literature by proposing and validating the hierarchical EMSQ model.