Implementing reverse e-auctions: A learning process

Reverse e-auctions, which enable suppliers to compete on-line in real-time, are changing the way organizations select their suppliers. We explore how five large firms in different industries learned to use e-auctions, and how e-auctions were integrated into their purchasing processes. To successfully implement e-auctions, organizations should: (1) build e-auction competencies; (2) organize for knowledge management; (3) create a holistic sourcing process; (4) focus on the total cost of ownership; and (5) experiment with e-auction designs. Key observations are drawn from the case studies, and implications for supply managers are presented.     

Consumer motivations and concerns in online auctions: an exploratory study

This investigates the reasons behind the dramatic growth of Internet auction companies such as eBay, exploring into why so many consumers have been motivated to turn to online auctions to purchase and sell goods. It is found that the ability to purchase items at lower prices than from retail stores is the primary motivation, along with having access to previously unobtainable items. Concerns mainly relate to potential fraudulent transactions, although the negative feedback system is found to be vital in the reduction of fears over fraud. Interaction with other auction users is found to be important for practical reasons such as information seeking, rather than for enjoyment. The main conclusion is that the benefits of using Internet auctions far outweigh the risks involved.     

Online Auction Fraud: Ethical Perspective

Internet fraud is an issue that increasingly concerns regulators, consumers, firms, and business ethics researchers. In this article, we examine one common form of internet fraud, the practice of shill bidding (when a seller in an auction enters a bid on his or her own item). The significant incidence of shill bidding on eBay (in spite of the fact that it is illegal just as it is in live auctions) exemplifies the current ineffectiveness of regulatory means as well as the lack of effective societal mechanisms to prevent online fraud. Further, the proliferation of shill bidding along with other types of internet fraud may have broader implications. If unethical behavior such as shill bidding becomes too widespread on the internet, regulators and other societal forces may deem it necessary to institute controls that will impact the entire online marketplace as well as the future development and regulation of business activities on the internet. Our results indicate that shill bidding is perpetrated on eBay significantly more often than 0.1% rate of fraud estimated by the firm. This suggests that regulators, users, and others stakeholders may become concerned enough to act. The impact of those responses on the internet of the future may affect a broad array of users beyond the unethical sellers on eBay. Alex Nikitkov is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada Darlene Bay is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada     

Procurement auctions and negotiations: An empirical comparison

Real-world procurement transactions often involve multiple attributes and multiple vendors. Successful procurement involves vendor selection through appropriate market mechanisms. The advancement of information technologies has enabled different mechanisms to be applied to similar procurement situations. However, advantages and disadvantages of using such mechanisms remain unclear. The presented research compares two types of mechanisms: multi-attribute reverse auctions and multi-attribute multi-bilateral negotiations in e-procurement. Both laboratory and online experiments were carried out to examine their effects on the process, outcomes, and suppliers’ assessment. The results show that in procurement, reverse auctions were more efficient than negotiations in terms of the process. Auctions also led to greater gains for the buyers than negotiations, but the suppliers’ profit was lower in auctions. The buyer and the winning supplier jointly reached more efficient and balanced contracts in negotiations than in auctions. The results also show that the suppliers’ assessment was affected by their outcomes: the winning suppliers had a more positive assessment toward the process, outcomes, and the system. The findings are consistent in both the laboratory and the online settings. Finally, the implications of this study for practitioners and researchers are discussed.     

Government Liquidation: How Online Auctions Will Replace Bob's Army-Navy Store

ABSTRACT

In the private sector, there is a great deal of interest in the use of forward auctions as a means of increasing recovery rates on surplus or returned items, as part of an overall reverse logistics strategy. Only recently has the public sector realized that it too has the potential to solve its reverse logistics problem and derive revenue at the end of the governmental supply chain. The biggest current experiment in this area involves the Department of Defense. Until recently, American military surplus was sold through physical auctions at 200 facilities worldwide. In mid-2001, the Defense Reutilization and Management Service entered into a unique partnership with Liquidity Services, awarding the firm an exclusive contract to surplus for the armed forces that is not claimed for reuse by other federal, state, and local agencies. Liquidity Services set up a special subsidiary, Government Liquidation, which oversees the storage, display, lotting, and auctioning of military surplus items on its specially-created auction site, www.govliquidation.com. The company's proprietary auction platform provides complete fulfillment solutions, including the handling of payments, shipments, and customer service, and dispute resolutions. This paper is an analysis of this unique partnership and the results produced to date.     

消费者对网上购物的风险认知及影响因素

风险认知是影响消费者网上购物的重要因素。网上购物的风险,主要包括财务风险、性能风险、身体风险、时间风险、隐私风险、心理风险和社会风险等维度。影响消费者网上购物风险认知的因素,主要有网络使用经验、网上购物经历、产品知识、创新性等。采取一些适当的措施,可以有效地降低网上购物的风险认知。     

基于第三方 B2B 平台的线上供应链金融模式演进与风险管理研究简

线上供应链金融是供应链金融服务的前沿领域,也是日渐活跃的互联网金融的重要组成部分。在线上供应链金融业务中,商业银行面临的风险要素相比线下模式发生了很大变化,因此对风险的管理不容忽视。文章主要运用理论研究和对比研究等方法,对线上供应链金融的模式演进与风险要素进行了深入分析。结果发现：虽然线上供应链金融在协同运作和服务效率上有很大提升,但是针对网商的特性和线上化的特点,其风险发生了诸多变化,银行面临的风险整体有所增加。据此,从严格准入条件、明晰权责界定、提高操作水平、加强监控预警、完善补偿机制等五个方面对银行的风险管控提出了参考建议。     

Online users' attitudes toward fake news: Implications for brand management

This study examines brands' vulnerability to fake news. The rapid spread of online misinformation poses challenges to brand managers, whose brands are cocreated online, sometimes to the detriment of the brand. There is a need to identify the information sources that are likely to be trustworthy and to promote positive consumer attitudes toward brands. The data for this study were taken from a Flash Eurobarometer of 26,576 respondents across 28 European countries. Cluster analysis and partial least squares structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data and unveil users' attitudes toward fake news. The findings show that users' attitudes toward fake news differ among European countries. Younger and tech-savvy users are more likely to recognize fake news and are consequently able to evaluate digital information sources without relying on policy interventions to limit the impact of fake news. Brand managers can use the findings of this study to better understand different kinds of users' susceptibility to fake news and reshape their social media branding strategies accordingly. It is hoped that this paper will encourage further research on brand management in relation to fake news and promote the widespread adoption of best practices in social media communication.     

Self-Disclosure and Managing Privacy: Implications for Interpersonal and Online Communication for Consumers and Marketers

In our fast-changing technological world, the line between the offline and online world has become blurred and individuals are faced with constant opportunities to divulge personal details. The process of disclosing sensitive information to others is necessary for establishing, maintaining, and building relationships, both with people and businesses; however, it also creates opportunities for misuse of the disclosed information. Consumers who are willing to disclose personal information online may often be unaware of the full implications of such disclosure. By thoroughly exploring the origins and processes of self-disclosure, and outlining its development in interpersonal and online communication, individuals will become more aware of their (sometimes competing) implicit and explicit disclosure behaviors necessary for enacting strong privacy management. Utilizing communication privacy management (CPM) theory, this article proposes a framework for ongoing consideration of how self-disclosure and privacy function online. By framing privacy in terms of the literature of communicative self-disclosure, CPM instructs the building of privacy boundaries that are functional for consumers and marketers alike, allowing people to protect themselves online while also ensuring their continued enjoyment of Internet provided benefits.     

Blurring B2C and B2B boundaries: corporate brand value co-creation in B2B2C markets

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore how corporate brands co-create value with their multiple stakeholders in a B2B2C marketplace. Main data sources stem from in-depth interviews with top managers of a technology corporation in the financial sector. Findings depict a model that conceptualises the successful value co-creation process as the careful management of six specific drivers, namely: interdependency, direct approach, trust, strategic alignment, adaptive modus operandi, and knowledge sharing. Hence, the study offers new food for thought for scholars and practitioners who wish to improve their knowledge and understanding on brand value co-creation and corporate marketing.     

How Service-Related Factors Affect the Survival of B2T Providers: A Sentiment Analysis Approach

ABSTRACT

Nearly one-third of the business-to-team (B2T) websites in China closed down in 2011—the casualties of the intensified competition in the group-buying market. To investigate the critical factors to the survival of online B2T businesses in an overcrowded buyer-side market, we propose a model that links convenience, price, product/service, personalization, and website security/safety to customer satisfaction of B2T websites in light of the related literature. A two-stage approach is applied to validate this model. In Stage I, according to the results of an empirical analysis based on questionnaire responses from 157 B2T website users, we found that convenience and product/service are the top two contributors to the success of B2T business, as measured by customers’ repurchase intentions. In Stage II, topic classification and sentiment analysis are applied to 3046 review comments related to 58 B2T websites. The results from the Stage II study confirm the validity of the Stage I results with further evidence to support our arguments.     

Employee brand engagement on social media: Managing optimism and commonality

This article considers how employees engage with B2B firms on social media, a topic that is largely overlooked in the extant brand engagement literature. Using the results from a large-scale study of employee brand engagement on social media, we identify two key drivers of employee brand engagement using the content analysis tool DICTION—namely, optimism and commonality. Employees of top-ranked and -rated firms express higher levels of optimism and commonality in their reviews of their employers on social media than do their counterparts in bottom-ranked and -rated firms. This permits the construction of a 2 × 2 matrix that allows managers to diagnose strategies for increasing or improving employee brand engagement. This creates four different kinds of employee brand engagement situations, and offers human resources and marketing managers different strategies in each case. We demonstrate how practitioners and scholars can shed new light on the way stakeholders engage with brands.     

New products or remanufactured products: Which is consumer-friendly under a closed-loop multi-level supply chain?

If the remanufactured and fresh products are in the market at the same price and quality, then it is difficult for the retailer to sell them all together simultaneously. There is differentiability in the market by the consumers even though they are of similar quality and price. These remanufactured products are the effect of a closed-loop supply chain. The closed-loop type supply chain problems have pulled much attention to tackling environmental and social issues for these remanufactured products. Based on the concern, a closed-loop formation of the supply chain is formulated with four players. Two types of quality are assigned for the manufactured and remanufactured products as remanufactured products maintain less quality than the newly manufactured products. The production system is imperfect, then all products are not perfect. A mathematical model with a multi-cycle closed-loop supply chain is discussed here, where the reworking process happens within the same cycle. An acceptance quality level influences the regaining rate of consumed products. The non-integrated phenomenon uses the inventory management policy operated by the vendor and the consignment-type stock policy. This mathematical problem is solved by employing algorithms, developed to achieve the local optimum (non-integrated situations) and global optimum (integrated situations). A numerical example and sensitivity analysis are provided to establish the mathematical model numerically. Results obtain that the retailer can tackle the situation in a proper way such that the closed-loop supply chain always is in profit. The profit is globally maximized, and the best results are obtained from different situations.