Intermediaries as Two-Sided Markets in Electronic Commerce

Author

Liu, Qi ; Li, Mingzhi

Author_Institution

Tsinghua Univ., Beijing

fYear

2007

fDate

9-11 June 2007

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

Online intermediaries play an important role in facilitating transactions in electronic commerce. In this paper we apply the insights from the emerging economic literature on two-sided markets and platform competition to the analysis of intermediaries in electronic commerce. In particular we are interested in answering the following questions: (1) How to categorize intermediaries in electronic commerce? (2) What are the optimal pricing schemes in the building of an electronic intermediary platform? (3)What are the appropriate governance structures of e-commerce intermediaries in different industries? Cases based on China´s e-commerce practices will be cited for the validation of the theoretical arguments.

Keywords

Internet; electronic commerce; organisational aspects; pricing; electronic commerce; governance structures; industrial organisation; online intermediaries; optimal pricing scheme; two-sided market; Buildings; Computer industry; Consumer electronics; Costs; Credit cards; Electronic commerce; Monopoly; Particle measurements; Pricing; Software tools; electronic commerce; intermediaries; two-sided markets;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Service Systems and Service Management, 2007 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Chengdu

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0885-7

Electronic_ISBN

1-4244-0885-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSSSM.2007.4280222

Filename

4280222