INTERNET PORTAL FOR THE TOURISM INDUSTRY’S FOOD SUPPLIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA

Branimir Dukić, Marcel Meler, Drago Ružić

Department of Economics University of Osijek, Croatia

bdukic@efos.hr, marcel.meler@os.htnet.hr, ruzic@efos.hr Abstract As a country wherein the tourism industry enjoys an utmost importance, the Republic of Croatia simultaneously disposes of considerable capacities in the agribusiness production and the food-processing industry as well. An insufficient share of the locally produced foodstuffs in Croatia’s tourist product imposes a necessity to find out the ways for a more successful connection between these economic sectors. The analysis has established that a sufficiently efficacious and transparent system that might efficiently interconnect the demand and supply in the foodstuff supply chain is nonexistent in the Croatian cyberspace. The situation might be changed by the new mediator roles pertaining to the cyber companies penetrating into the information markets and transforming their role into the creators of the new markets, new market communities, and new managerial relations, thus opening the space for the planning and realization of an overall foodstuff supply chain founded on the new cooperative bases. A vertical Internet portal is being suggested as an adequate model that might initially be an excellent basis for the development of long-term relations between the food supplies and the tourism industry as well. Keywords: agriculture, e-hub, e-market, food industry, portal, tourism industry Introduction Croatia is a relatively small country (56,542 km2 and 4,437,460 inhabitants) having numerous attractive tourist resources providing for a solid basis for the demonstration of a strategic determination heading toward the tourism industry’s development. According to the Croatian Chamber of Economy (‹http://www.hgk.hr/› [August 2003]), the year 2002 has recorded 6% more tourists and 3% more overnight stays in comparison with the previous year. Thus, in the period under analysis, 8.3 million tourists visited Croatia, with a total of 44.7 million overnight stays. According to the Croatian National Bank’s data, the 2002 international tourism revenue amounted to US$ 3.8 billion, which represents a 14% increase in comparison with the previous year. Even better results are expected this year. As there is a pronounced interactivity between the tourism industry on one side and agribusiness, food-processing industry, and other economic branches on the other side, it is obvious that the share of all activities comprising the tourism products’ constituents in Croatia should be essentially enforced as to enable them to be competitive to both the foreign and domestic tourist consumers primarily with regard to their quality and subsequently with regard to their prices. Only in that way could the tourism industry be economically successful and generate the development of auxiliary activities, especially that of agribusiness and the

646

food-processing industry, wherefore the good preconditions are existent in Croatia in the sense of production and processing facilities. Croatia has a total of 3.15 million ha of agricultural land. About 2 million ha of the total are cultivated and the rest consists of pastures, moors, reed fields and fishponds. The vineyard areas amount to 58,000 ha. The arable lands account for 81.5%, and a little more than 80% of the total livestock are privately owned. The aforementioned indices orientationally demonstrate that Croatia has productional and processing capacities that, according to the experts’ opinions, may also satisfy the largest part of demands for agricultural products and foodstuffs in the tourism industry in addition to the satisfaction of resident population needs. The establishment of guidelines and steps for an equilibration and synchronization of demand of the consuming tourist (the so-called “blue,” i.e., Adriatic littoral) with the supply of the productional agribusiness and food-processing (the so-called “green,” continental) Republic of Croatia’s area are thus emerging as a dominant objective heading toward the setup of long-term incentives and other economic policy measures. As to achieve this interconnection, the tourism offer subjects in the tourist areas should be complementarily connected with continental economic resources, thus also succeeding in the achievement of tourist products’ offer qualitatively and quantitatively correspondent to the identified tourists’ needs. It is achievable only if we bear in mind the fact that “customers, both end consumers and intermediaries, are expecting dramatically more — more information, more speed, more flexibility, more cooperation/collaboration and more service. Understanding and leveraging this is the imperative for survival in the digital economy” (McCormack and Kasper, 2002:134). The paper starts from the fact that at this moment in Croatia there is informationally no sufficiently efficient and transparent system representing an overall foodstuff supply chain that might contribute to a better hotel and catering facilities’ supply in the tourist areas. Such a situation might be tremendously changed, for the new participants are apparent in the cyberspace that might establish new relations in the supply chains and indirectly lay the fundaments for a long-term tourist demand (consumption) and production and processing (supply) potentials’ harmonization based upon the new technological bases. This pertains to the new intermediary cyber companies’ roles that penetrate into the information markets and transform their role into the creators of new markets, new market communities, and new managerial relations, thus opening the arena to the planning and realization of an overall foodstuff supply chain based upon the new cooperative fundaments. The paper therefore depicts the way in which the Internet portals might contribute to a more efficacious operationalization of the existent and potential resources, as well as of the entire foodstuff supply chain. The supply chain is being observed in the context of a producer (supplier) – intermediaries – buyers relations. Theory/Issues The business-to-business (B2B) commerce emanates from the heretofore-present wholesale e-commerce that prevailed up to the mid-1990s, in fact consisting of enormous assets transferred among the banks by closed computerized systems, including the Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFTS). Presently, what we might call the wholesale e-commerce has been regenerated into another term and also into the essentially different activities. These are the business transactions between the economic entities, or B2B transactions. Namely, a critical managemental mass has been developed with time, needing the Internet to facilitate and

647

alleviate the business life, so they effectuate the purchases necessary for their company online, ranging from the stationary pen supplies up to the chemical industry plants. “There is nothing more important to work on in the field of business communications and technology than B2B” (Johnson 2000:47). Using the Web-based front-ends, all of the sellers and buyers in a particular industry can have instant access, via a trading exchange portal running on an Extranet, to up-to-the-minute information on what products are in demand and what is on offer in that particular market. Larger enterprises will spearhead the development of B2B, which will enable them to gain a long-term competitive advantage by successful integration of the Internet into their business model. Over the last decade, the general trend in supply chains has been to work with fewer suppliers. The development of B2B has made it easier to source products from a larger number and a wider geographical range of suppliers (Corbitt, 2002). The recent advancement of information technologies, in particular the Internet, has transformed the traditional economy into a network- and knowledge-based one, where the electronic commerce (e-commerce) has assumed an increasingly important role in reshaping the buyer – supplier relationships, improving core business processes, providing electronic intermediation, and reaching new segments and markets (McIvor et al., 2000). Significant changes are already observed in retail markets in which the Web has been exploited as a new channel to market, sell, and distribute consumer products in the emergence of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce (Ho et al., 2003). The B2B Websites can be sorted into the following groups (‹http://searchcio.techtarget. com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci2 14411,00.html› [August 2003]):

Company Websites, since the target audience for many corporate Websites are other companies and their employees. The company sites can be thought of as the round-the-clock mini-trade exhibits. Sometimes a company Website serves as the entrance to an exclusive extranet available only to customers or registered site users. Some company Websites sell directly from the site, effectively e-tailing to other businesses.

•

•

•

•

•

Product supply and procurement exchanges, where a company’s purchasing agent can shop for supplies from vendors, request proposals, and, in some cases, bid to make a purchase at a desired price. Sometimes referred to as the e-procurement sites, some serve a range of industries and others focus on a niche market. Specialized, or vertical industry portals, which provide a “sub-Web” of information, product listings, discussion groups, and other features. These vertical portal sites have a broader purpose than the procurement sites (although they may also support buying and selling). Brokering sites that act as an intermediary between someone wanting a product or service and potential providers. Equipment leasing is an example. Information sites (sometimes known as infomediaries), which provide information about a particular industry for its companies and their employees. These include specialized search sites and trade and industry standards organization sites.

Many B2B sites may seem to fall into more than one of these groups. The models for B2B sites are still evolving. The term “B2B marketplace” can be defined as “a World Wide Web (WWW) site where goods and services can be bought from a wide range of suppliers” (Ramsdell, 2000), or as

648

“the Internet-based intermediaries that create new efficiencies in the supply chain, including new ways of buying, selling, and brokering products and services” (Monastero, 2001). Those definitions imply that the Internet plays a crucial role in the existence of a B2B marketplace for a supply chain formation and development. The explosion in the use of the WWW in the last decade or so goes some way in explaining the increased attention received by the digital marketplaces. Kipola (2000) predicts that by 2005 the digital marketplaces will generate over half of all online commerce revenues, dwarfing the revenues generated by all other Net commerce business models combined. The digital marketplaces generate value thru two main mechanisms: the aggregation and matching. The marketplaces using the aggregation mechanism bring together a large number of buyers and sellers under one virtual roof. By providing the one-stop shopping, they reduce the transaction costs and greatly improve the choices and market efficiency. Generally speaking, there are three types of digital marketplaces (Lu and Antony, 2003):

1. Marketplaces based around a specific industry sectors, 2. Marketplaces based around products and services, 3. Marketplaces focused on functions.

The e-markets are analogical with hubs so we use to term them like e-hubs and usually assume their forms as portals. The portals are Websites that offer a broad array of resources and services, such as the news, e-mail, database searches and online advertising, serving as the starting points or gateways to other destinations or activities on the Web. The e-hubs are neutral or biased virtual (Internet-based) intermediaries that host the e-marketplaces for specific industries or specific business processes and use various market-making mechanisms to facilitate any-to-any B2B transactions (Kaplan and Sawhney, 2000). Research of the Croatian cyberspace As to get acquainted with the portal usage situation and the development of B2B transactions in the Republic of Croatia’s tourism industry, the Croatian cyberspace was searched for the sake of this paper. The search conducted by the Croatian-customized Google search engine and those provided by the largest domestic ISPs HThinet and Iskon Internet was performed based on the following keywords: B2B, portal+food, food-processing industry+portal, offer+foodstuffs and demand+foodstuffs. Bearing in mind the business profiles and the searched portal contents, thru the combination of the aforementioned criteria extracted were the portals that may be in a way profiled as the potential e-hubs for the establishment of exchange relationships concerning the preselected business strategies, disposable technological base, their sphere of activities, e-commerce experiences and the markets covered. Searched were also numerous foodstuff producers’ Websites as to find out and analyze the potential ones offering the foodstuff supply possibility and the experiences that might be used in the development of a future e-hub. The search results have confirmed the hypothesis that there is no Website specialized as an intermediary for the connection of supply and demand in the Croatian cyberspace concerning the needs of the Croatian tourism industry. The search has established the existence of several Web directories where the offerers of certain tourist market-oriented product types are findable among the numerous product categories. E.g., these imply ‹http://www.croatiabiz.com/› (an economic Web directory) and ‹http://www.e-

649

burza.com/marketing.php3›. The data findable at these sites may be in a broader sense interesting to the tourist subjects; however, it is evident that it has not been accepted in the practice, since there is no product category that might be interesting to them. Among the thematically interesting research outcomes is also the auction site ‹http://www.aukcija24.com /index.cfm›, but even thereupon there is no concrete product offer in the agribusiness or foodstuff category. In our opinion, the closest to a desirable approach is a concept implemented by the Poslovni forum Website (‹http://www.poslovniforum.hr /www0439177.asp›). It pertains to a business portal affiliated with the category of a broadly specialized horizontal portal, providing for the representation and business information search services and individual Web-based presentations within the portal. Partially, it also represents the fundament for our proposals. Results of the research We apply a sort of a benchmarking in the creation of an e-marketplace for the Croatian tourism industry’s food supply needs. Namely, the functioning of an e-marketplace is a reality in the developed market economies. E.g., it was announced already in the year 2000 that more than fifty of the world’s largest grocery manufacturers are planning to build a massive online marketplace that will be open to every rung of their supply chains, the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA). Some of the many companies involved in the planning stages of the online exchange include Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé USA, Unilever, Kraft Foods, Campbell Soup Co., Dial Corp., Energizer, General Mills, Colgate-Palmolive and H. J. Heinz. It is expected that the marketplace will bring together multiple buyers and sellers and will support catalog purchasing, bidding and price quotes, online sourcing and auctions for raw materials, packaging supplies and other goods and services critical to the operations of participating manufacturers (Brunelli, 2000). Though we have not been equipped with the knowledge of how successful it was, it is obvious that the congenial efforts exist even on such a large market as that of the USA. Equal to our desire to establish a similar system for the Croatian tourism industry’s food supply needs thru the benchmarking, the aforementioned GMA has also followed the lead of companies like General Motors and Ford in building their own online bazaar. The Croatian tourism industry’s peculiarities, characterized by a relatively small number of economic subjects and similarly, with some exceptions to the rule, by a rather dispersed foodstuff production (842 companies are registered in the food-processing, beverage, and tobacco industry with 45,000 employees, or ca. 18% of the Croatian processing industry’s employee total, cf. ‹http://www.hgk.hr/komora/eng/depts/agriculture/poljoprivreda.pdf›), direct toward a necessity to develop an agribusiness, foodstuff, and tourist e-hub as an acceptable B2B model. Necessary hereby is a portal concept that should become a true gateway to all interested subjects concerning the tourism industry and agricultural and foodstuff sector. The portal concept is acceptable because it may assure all relevant information for the e-hub participants as well as for the other interested entities. This would create the necessary site visitors’ traffic, thus turning it into a brand of a kind, which might be transformed into an excellent marketing medium for all the known Web advertising forms (banners, editorials, affiliated programs, sponsor relations, etc.) in certain evolutional phases, as well as a solid ground for the development of more sophisticated e-business forms. The e-hub participants’ motive should be indubitable, for a new channel for the establishment of cooperative buyer relations is being created on the supply side, while on the other hand a realistic basis for the establishment of more efficacious supply channels that should be

650

transformed into the long-term relations of a higher level is existent concerning the tourist subjects. In this portal’s initial developmental phase, the e-hub participants should be equipped with the necessary technical and personnel prerequisites for their e-business involvement both on the supply and the demand sides. Concerning the circumstances in Croatia, it is unlikely that the number of these entities is sufficient as to render this portal profitable to anyone in its developmental stage. Therefore, the portal should incipiently assume an institutional character and be equally financed by the interested institutions and the participants, and may achieve business results in the forthcoming developmental stages at the earliest. In other words, the portal organizer should find out the ways for the incorporation of both the supply and demand representatives, while the harmonization of their interests might create a solid ground for the motivation and involvement of a larger number of participants. It is worth emphasizing that the portal should have an equally developed informational and business function, for they are complimentary in the portals of the kind. Each registered user should be eligible for a basic service package, enabling the user’s entrance into a business database and the creation of user’s Web presentation on the portal system, a presentation of the user and his/her supply and demand, a direct or indirect search of the existent database and other contents according to the disposable criteria, the tracking of Croatian and foreign business news and an insight into the useful contributions’ digests in the field of tourism and food-processing industry. The database should be created gradually, parallel to the emergence of certain product categories and individual products within each category. A business database search would be effectuated by entering the term into a specified field. The search would entitle the user to directly browse thru the business database in order to find a necessary product or other information needed, being the first step toward the realization of a business that might be entirely completed on the portal. The unregistered users would not obtain detailed search results but only a datum on the number of replies found corresponding to the query entered, while the registered ones would be provided with the advanced search facilities and additional criteria (a narrower geographic area, business subject type, etc.). The registered users would receive their user names and passwords to login to the portal and utilize the predefined services. The expected developmental result of such a portal should initially be the establishment of basic supply and demand relationship with regard to the agricultural produces and foodstuffs and later with regard to all other products used in the tourism industry. The development of higher B2B relational levels and automation in ordering and delivery of certain product types may be expected with time. Conceptual Model of an E-Commerce System in the Function of Agricultural Production’s Connection with the Tourist Catering Industry Based on the aforementioned theory related to various approaches in consideration of e-business functionality, in the function of continental agroalimentary resource and touristic catering industry connection it is necessary to access the e-business system modeling and operationalization in a significantly more pragmatic way. Continental Croatia, especially its Eastern part, is predominantly declared as an agricultural region whose potentials are emphasized by agricultural experts as both quantitatively and qualitatively outstanding in Southern Europe. As a rule, the premium- and subsidy-based systems of proper agricultural production protection developed by European countries render the Republic of Croatia’s agricultural production uncompetitive when it comes to the European market export, so the agricultural production in the Republic of Croatia has to search for its export chance in the tourist catering industry as Croatia’s declaredly original potential.

651

However, paradoxical is the fact that the agroalimentary stuffs produced in the Republic of Croatia are regularly of a significantly higher quality than the foreign ones, but they hardly find their way to the Croatian tourist catering industry. The reasons for such a situation should be primarily searched for in a developed, unorganized, vast, inert and expensive commerce system. E.g., if agroalimentary stuff from continental Croatia, where it is produced, were scheduled to arrive to the Croatian littoral region, where it would be offered within the Croatian tourist supply, it has to pass through a complex logistics chain frequently incorporating a larger number of intermediaries, such as wholesale or retailers (Fig. 1). The logistics chain length varies, being rarely shorter than four links, whereby the agroalimentary stuff producers are situated at the beginning and touristic catering industry at the chain’s end. Each chain link decelerates and makes the exchange process more expensive, so systematic solutions that might assure a direct exchange relation between an agroalimentary stuff producer and tourist caterer have to be searched for.

AGRICULTURALPRODUCER

WHOLESALER(MIDDLEMAN)

WHOLESALER(DEALER)

RETAILBUSINESS

CATERER

CLASSIC SALE CHAINE-BUSINESS

Fig. 1: An agroalimentary producer – caterer logistics chain A solution to the problem should be searched for in an organized, institutionally based agroalimentary stuff stock market exchange that would integrate and render the agroalimentary stuff production transparent. The operationalization of such an approach would provide for the conditions for an e-commerce system development, thus accelerating exchange processes while directly connecting an agricultural producer and a tourist caterer (Fig. 1) and rendering Croatian agroalimentary stuff competitive and desirable to the Croatian tourist catering industry. If we should analyze the present cyberspace situation, we would note the existence of several Croatian B2C Websites in the function of agroalimentary stuff supply, but these attempts to create an electronic agroalimentary stuff supply are of a limited character and should be more observed as brave endeavors than as realistic integral solutions to the problem of Croatian agroalimentary stuff supply. An agroalimentary stuff buyback model through a system of large-sized marketplaces and wholesale companies, institutionally enforced in the last decennial or so, has not provided for a necessary agricultural production transparency level, needed to assure the conditions for a logistics chain abridgement, so the existent agroalimentary stuff buyback model is to be upgraded while defining an agroalimentary stuff stock market exchange that would

652

systematically encompass producers’ supply and integrate it with accompanying subsystems, such as the banking and transportation ones. On the fundaments of such an organized agroalimentary stuff production supply system, it is possible to develop a respectable information system that would incorporate the state-of-the-art digital technology potentials in the function of creation of conditions for a more high-quality penetration of Croatian agroalimentary products to the Croatian tourist catering industry’s market as realistically most important Croatian export products. Fig. 2 depicts the frameworks necessary for the development of a respectable exchange Web system that would support B2C and B2B.

AGRICULTURALPRODUCER

CATERER

WEBSITE

B2C

B2BTRANSPORTATION

BANKINGSYSTEM

AGRICULTURALPRODUCT STOCKEXCHANGE

Fig 2: A pragmatic framework for the development of a respectable exchange Web system

The determinants for the development and build-up of an exchange Web system in the function of the Republic of Croatia’s agroalimentary products supply are as follows:

Overall systematic approach to the modeling o fan integral exchange information Web system;

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Global promotional campaign aimed at the introduction of all potential Website service user groups to the benefits provided by a B2C and B2B exchange concepts and the creation of an overall positive climate with regard to the project relevance and purposefulness; Assurance of a significant institutional support to the project conduct and sustainability, from the primary legislative to the fiscal one; Provision of necessary premises, infrastructure, hardware and software components, human resources and organization; Definition of exchange protocols, access and protection systems, users’ rights, safety, data presentation mode and the like; Web page design, data substrata in the form of a database model, a systemic model of B2B data exchange and the like; Web application development, database scheme design, server and necessary service installation, application testing and operationalization, user support service establishment, server, database, and programmatic application maintenance system organization, provision of project’s developmental component and the like.

As demonstrated by the adduced framework survey of an exchange Web system modeling and build-up determinants in the function of the Republic of Croatia’s agroalimentary product supply, it pertains to a large-sized and complex business endeavor that should be optimally built within a public company because of its public relevance. Concerning the interest sphere

653

and spatial limitation, in this paper we will be focused only on a framework data resource modeling as a starting point in the development of this business information system, wherefore the proposed model should be accepted as a principal methodological guideline in the development of a final model of exchange Web system database in the function of the Republic of Croatia’s agricultural product supply. Since it implies the concept of a virtual large-sized marketplace, the PRODUCT entity should occupy the central part of database model, which is simultaneously the subject of our interest in this paper and wherefore the essential characteristics in an exchange process such as product name, producer, disposable quantity, price, product origin, qualitative characteristics, durability, payment modality, delivery mode and deadline, transportation conditions, other commercial stipulations, dispute solution modalities, etc., are being defined. Bearing in mind that it encompasses a concept integrating a B2B and B2C approach, a database model also has to encompass all additional entities with correspondent attributes and relevant modeling connections participating in business transactions, from formal documents such as a purchasing order or an invoice up to various cashless payment systems. Such a model necessitates the inclusion of transportation and banking system, also implying the involvement of entities having the correspondent attributes and relevant connections pertaining to the aforementioned subsystems. A database model is defined on a relational data model, while XML is anticipated for data interchange in B2B transactions. Fig. 3 depicts a database model segment pertaining to the PRODUCT entity, with a part of incipient attributes as well as the entity parts connected thereto. As a relational model is principally an entity one wherein the uncontrolled redundancies are eliminated through formation techniques, the figure depicts a database segment model in the third normal form.

PRODUCT_CODEPRODUCT_NAMEPRODUCER_CODEMEASUREMENT_UNITSTOCK_STATUSSALE_PRICE ********

PRODUCT

PARTNERPARTNER_CODEPARTNER_NAME ********

TRANSACTION LOGIDPRODUCT_CODEPARTNERDATEINPUT/OUTPUT INDICATORQUANTITYPRICE *********

Fig. 3: A database model segment pertaining to the PRODUCT entity

A Web application should assure a database check-in system pertinent to both the product types and the partners and provide for the exchange transaction monitoring through a TRANSACTION LOG relation. Each alteration to the transaction log would result in a change in the stock status in the PRODUCT relation. The price used in the transactional part should be assumed from the PRODUCT relation, whereby an overall flexibility would be provided, e.g., the one manifested in a possibility of producer-based online price correction. An incipient Web application exchange interface pertaining to a Web system in the function of the Republic of Croatia’s agroalimentary product supply would exactly effectuate a data interchange while using the presented relational data model segment. Eventually, a complete data model integrates 10-odd relations with several hundreds correspondent attributes, essentially comprising a starting point for the development of a pragmatic model pertinent to an exchange Web system’s application in the function of the Republic of Croatia’s agroalimentary product supply.

654

Conclusion The significance that the modern information technology has recently enjoyed in obtaining and sustaining the competition is being reflected in all economic spheres in the developed economic societies. The Croatian tourism industry is endangered exactly by a complete loss of competition on the global market due to an inert (domestic) informational inferiority, reflected inter alia in a meager cooperation between the tourist offer and an extremely important Croatian food-producing economic subsystem as well. In the present conditions, wherein the environmental awareness becomes an increasingly dominant tourist competitiveness factor, the healthy food production in a traditional way preserved in the Republic of Croatia represents a key to the Croatian tourism industry’s success. Unfortunately, a foreign foodstuff is increasingly being an ingredient of the Croatian tourist product, whereby the Croatian tourism industry looses its autochthonousness, quality, and thereby its competitiveness as well. The logistics chain length on one side, wherefore a domestic agricultural product is not competitive to the foreign one, and poor information on the healthy food production potentials on the other side, represent a fundamental reason for such a situation as regards the relations and continental resource functionality pertaining to the food production in the role of the Republic of Croatia’s tourism industry. Developing an e-commerce system that would integrate the food-producing potentials in the Republic of Croatia on one side and the Croatian tourism industry’s needs for agricultural products on the other side would provide for the solution to the problem. Concerning the fact that it practically pertains to the development of a virtual e-market that should be independent from both the demanders and suppliers, the task of developing such a market is being delegated to the tier of an overall Croatian economy, so we are of the opinion that the key steps are to be made in the definition of standards and protocols and the definition of data resources necessary for an efficacious market interaction, being also a constituent of this research. The solution presented constitutes a primary anlage for the development of an applicative elucidation. Regarding a permanent danger of the loss of Croatian tourism industry’s competitiveness on one side and the lack of competitiveness of the Croatian food-processing industry in the global conditions on the other side, this model should be applied as soon as possible. It also pertains to the model that should indubitably evolve in a very short time span, providing for the space for further research concerning the conceptual and pragmatic improvements commensurate to an overall information technology evolution. References Brunelli, M. A. (2000), “Fifty-plus Consumer Product Firms Will Form B2B E-marketplace.” Purchasing 128(6): 93f. Corbitt, T. (2002), “Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce.” Management Services 46 (1): 32. Ho, D. C. K., Au, K. F., & E. Newton. (2003), “The process and Consequences of Supply Chain Virtualization.” Industrial Management & Data Systems 103(6): 423 – 33. Johnson, T. (2000), “Time to Put B2B ‘Leverage’ to Work.” Foodservice Equipment & Supplies 53(9): 47f. Kaplan, S., & M. Sawhney (2000), “E-hubs: The New B2B Marketplaces.” Harvard Business Review 78: 97 – 103.

655

Kipola, T. (2000), “Digital Marketplaces.” The Industry Standard Magazine. Lu, D., & J. Antony (2003), “Implications of B2B Marketplace to Supply Chain Development” The TQM Magazine 15(3): 173 – 79. McCormack, K., & K. Kasper. (2002), “The Extended Supply Chain — A statistical Study.” Benchmarking: An International Journal 9(2): 133 – 45. McIvor, R., Humphreys, P., & G. Huang. (2000), “Electronic Commerce: Re-engineering the Buyer-Supplier Interface.” Business Process Management Journal 6(2): 122 – 38. Monastero, J. (2001), “Digital Marketplaces: Private vs. Public.” Supply Chain Technology News. Ramsdell, G. (2000), “The Real Business of B2B.” The McKinsey Quarterly 3: 175f.

656