A study of B2B e-market in China: E-commerce process perspective

In China, B2B electronic markets are still in their early stages of development. The lack of basic business infrastructures has delayed the development of e-markets. The intervention and support of government and IT firms was needed to provide technical support and services to e-markets. We developed a conceptual model to aid in evaluating value creation strategy in B2B e-market; it can also be used to determine the complexity of such activities in Chinese B2B e-markets. Based on a case study of two Chinese e-markets, a process-oriented approach was found to be more suitable in modeling the value creation and therefore was selected. The model addressed two major factors: the transaction process and controlling complexity. The crucial value creation activities and strategies in the four phases of the transaction process are identified, and the controlling complexity of these activities is evaluated in the model. Our results offer an approach for studying the dynamic structure of e-commerce processes while focusing on the special issues of e-market development in China.