Seller-based vs. Buyer-based Internet Intermediaries: A Research Design
In this paper, we investigate the roles of the Internet intermediaries as a market force in reducing barriers to Internet commerce. We also discuss the importance of business-to-business intermediaries for trading nonproduction goods and services. We present a research design for exploring the difference in the roles of sellerbased vs. buyer-based Internet intermediaries for nonproduction goods and services. Barriers to Internet Commerce The Internet has become a serious medium for commerce. The rapid expansion of the Internet market has been exponential. The Forrester Research Group predicts that Internet commerce will grow from $10 billion in 1997 to $327 billion in the year 2002 [Coy 1998]. It is projected that 80% of the increase in the transaction volume will be business-to-business transactions [McNamara 1997]. This trend is also evident in businesses investing in the Internet. A survey by Advantage Business Research found that 82% of the businesses they polled will upgrade their Internet functionality during 1999 [Wrenden 1998]. Internet commerce suffers from a number of perceived and actual trade barriers, including: 1) the difficulty of locating the relevant information and sites, 2) the difficulty of establishing the reliability of available information, 3) the difficulty of establishing the dependability of the publishing vendors, 4) the limited number of payment options, 5) the lack of security, 6) the lack of standards, 7) the lack of adequate bandwidth, 8) the lack of content regulation, and 9) the lack of adequate intellectual property protection [Chen 1996; de Bony 1997; Tweney 1997]. The issues regarding standards, bandwidth, and security are addressed by various regulatory and business groups, such as Global Internet Project [de Bony 1997], the Internet Purchasing Roundtable, and Supply Works [Chronister 1997; Avery 1997; Cronin 1997]. The proposed standards and solutions, such as the Open Buying Internet standard (OBI) [Chronister 1997; Avery 1997], the secure electronic transaction specification (SET) [Kutler 1998; Ceramlus 1997], and digital certificates [Pepper 1997] are designed to address some of the issues dealing with the barriers related to standards and security. However, the major issues related to content and reliability still remain and need to be addressed by the market forces themselves.