of course,a fragmented marketplace provides both opportunities and challenges.
Indeed,buyers recognize that by forcing many suppliers that offer similar products to compete against each other,procurement cost can be significantly reduced.
Unfortunately,to achieve these lower costs,buyers need significant expertise in the procurement process,which many of them did not have.
It is this environmrnt that ied ti the initial offering of independent e-marketplaces with either a vertical-industry focus or a horizotal-business-process or functional focus.