Objectives of knowledge management

4 Fixed- price sale
Examples:
all e‑tailers
Static call – online catalogue with fixed prices. Dynamic call – 
online catalogue with continuously updated prices and features
5 Pure markets
Example:
electronic share dealing
Spot – buyers’ and sellers’ bids clear instantly
6 Barter
Examples:
www.intagio.com and
www.bartercard.co.uk
Barter – buyers and sellers exchange goods. According to the 
International Reciprocal Trade Association (www.irta.com), 
barter trade was over $9 billion in 2002
Source
: Adapted from The All‑In‑ One‑ Market, 
Harvard Business Review,
pp. 2– 3 (Nunes, P., Kambil, A. and Wilson, D. 2000) © 2000 by 
the Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, all rights reserved.
Table 2.4
Commercial mechanisms and online transactions
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58
Part 1
Introduction
Sarkar
et al 
. (1996) identified many different types of new intermediaries (mainly from a 
B2C perspective) which we can still recognise today: 
● 
Directories (such as Yahoo!, Excite).
● 
Search engines (AltaVista, Infoseek).
● 
Malls (BarclaySquare, Buckingham Gate).
● 
Virtual resellers ( own‑ inventory and sell‑ direct, e.g. Amazon, CDNow).
● 
Financial intermediaries (off ering digital cash and cheque payment services, such as 
Paypal).
● 
Forums, fan clubs and user groups (referred to collectively as ‘virtual communities’).
● 
Evaluators (sites which perform review or comparison of services).
Riggins and Mitra (2007) have a more recent evaluation of alternative online market‑
place players which we review in Chapter 7 . A further type of intermediary is the
virtual 
marketplace
or virtual trading community of the B2B marketplace. From the supplier’s 
or manufacturer’s perspective they provide a new channel for selling their products. The 
form of these marketplaces is considered in more detail in ‘ 
Focus on
B2B marketplaces’ in 
Chapter 7 .