Design Trade‐offs for Electronic Intermediaries

Abstract

Electronic commerce offers intermediaries new opportunities for facilitating the transfer of information, goods and services between business customers and suppliers. Designing exchanges is a complex undertaking because of the many design options on the one hand and the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, interests of customers, suppliers and the intermediary to be considered on the other. Our research provides constructive support for balancing interests beyond simple prescriptions like ‘creating win‐win situations.’ We developed an exchange design model and patterns focusing on trade‐offs for electronic intermediaries based upon four in‐depth case studies. The design model offers a systematic insight into themes that are relevant to the interests of customers, suppliers, and the intermediary itself: the role of the intermediary, the linkages between intermediary and customers and suppliers, transparency for customers and suppliers, and the novelty of the intermediary. The patterns discuss specific trade‐offs with respect to one or more themes. The combination of a model and patterns for intermediaries that focus attention to design trade‐offs is new, and can support intermediaries in balanced design of exchanges with a positive net effect for all actors with less unanticipated side‐effects.

Keywords:

• electronic commerce
• intermediary
• business network
• case studies