B2B e-marketplaces
B2B marketplaces can be broadly defined as “platforms for exchanges between purchasers
and suppliers wishing to trade among themselves”6; their basic claim is to reduce the transaction
costs and especially the searching and negotiating costs in the procurement process. In
logistics, they focus on two types of services: spot transactions (typically single door-to-door
shipments), and complex contract negotiations that involve repetitive shipments and eventually
some complementary elements ranging from warehousing to more complex value-added
services.