Electronic Markets Selection in Supply Chain with Uncertain Demand and Uncertain Price

In recent years, more and more companies start online operation. Electronic market becomes a key component of some companies’ strategy. Supply chain management is another key component of the strategy as being adopted by an increasing number of companies. There are many interactions between electronic market and supply chain. One of the key questions is to select one type of electronic market from the view of supply chain. This paper develops some models to explore the issue of selection between public electronic market and private electronic market in three scenarios where electronic market is used for buying, for selling, and for both selling and buying, respectively. In a public electronic market, neither the supplier nor the retailer is the owner of the electronic market. However, in a private electronic market, there is an owner that is either the supplier or the retailer. Besides demand uncertainty, we take into account the price uncertainty in electronic market. We explore the conditions under which the agent of supply chain selects one certain type of electronic market by comparing expected profits of supply chain members in different scenarios. Some sensitivity analyses are conducted to explore the impact of the customer demand, electronic market retail price, and e-market use fee on the selection of electronic market. Finally, some interesting managerial and academic insights are obtained.