Types of E-Marketplaces
The term marketplace differs once it refers to the Web. It is sometimes refers to as e-marketplace or marketspace. We distinguish two types of e-marketplaces: private and public.
Private E-Marketplaces
Private e-marketplaces are those owned and operated by a single company. starbucks.com, dell. com, target.com, and united.com sell from their websites. Private markets are either sell-side or buy-side. In a sell-side e-marketplace, a company, (e.g., net-a-porter.com or cisco.com) will sell either standard or customized products to individuals (B2C) or to businesses (B2B); this type of selling is considered to be one-to-many. In a buy-side e-marketplace, a company purchases from many potential suppliers; this type of purchasing is considered to be many-to-one, and it is a B2B activity.
For example, some hotels buy their supplies from approved vendors that come to its e-market. Walmart (walmart.com) buys goods from thousands of suppliers. Private marketplaces can be open only to selected members and are not publicly regulated. We will return to the topic of private e-marketplaces in Chapters 3 (B2C) and 4 (B2B).
Public E-Marketplaces
Public e-marketplaces are in many cases B2B markets. They often are owned by a third party (not a seller or a buyer) or by a group of buying or selling companies (referred to as a consortium), and they serve many sellers and many buyers. These markets also are known as exchanges (e.g., a stock exchange). They are open to the public and usually are regulated by the government or the exchange’s owners.
Efraim Turban, David King, Jae Kyu Lee, Ting-Peng Liang, Deborrah C. Turban (2015), Electronic Commerce A Managerial and Social Networks Perspective
