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The future for independent B2B 

marketplaces

‘There is no future for independent 

B2B marketplaces, exchanges or hubs; 

instead those sponsored by buyers in 

the industry (for example, Covisint in 

the car industry) will be dominant.’

Debate 7.2

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Chapter 7  E‑procurement

of PCs from different manufacturers aggregates supply from the different manufacturers. 

Marketplaces can also act as value chain integrators when they combine supply chain 

functions  (referred  to  in   Chapter   6   ). 

 According to Sawhney (1999) companies looking to create exchanges typically specialise 

in one of the four sectors of  Table   7.7   , although some B2B marketplaces do offer both cata‑

logue hubs and exchanges. 

 

 Some marketplaces also differ in the range of services they offer – some may go beyond 

procurement to offer a range of services that integrate the supply chain. Sawhney (1999) 

refers to these marketplaces as ‘ 

metamediaries

 ’. An example of a metamediary is Plastics 

Net (

 www.plasticsnet.com

 ). This provides services of supplier evaluation, procurement, 

tracking, marketplace information, certification monitoring, auctions and catalogues.   

  

  The future of e‑procurement 

 In the future, some suggest that the task of searching for suppliers and products may be 

taken over by  

software agents

  which have defined rules or some degree of intelligence that 

replicates intelligence in humans. On the Internet, agents can already be used for marketing 

research by performing searches using many search engines and in the future they may also 

be used to search for products or even purchase products. Agents work using predetermined 

rules or may learn rules using neural network techniques. Such rules will govern whether 

purchases should be made or not.   

 Some of the implications of agent technology on marketing are explored by Gatarski 

and Lundkvist (1998). They suggest that agent technology may create artificial consumers 

who will undertake supplier search, product evaluation and product selection functions. 

The authors suggest that such actors in a supplier‑to‑consumer dialogue will behave in a 

more rational way than their human equivalents and existing marketing theories may not 

apply. 

 Tucker and Jones (2000) also review the use of intelligent agents for sourcing. They fore‑

see agents undertaking evaluation of a wide range of possible alternative suppliers based 

on predefined quantitative selection criteria including price, availability and delivery. They 

believe the technology is already available – indeed, similar intelligent software is used for 

making investments in financial markets. What is not clear is how the software will assess 

trustworthiness of a supplier or their competence as a business partner or associate.