B2B auctions play a key role in a firm's procurement process. Even though it is known that repetition is a key characteristic of procurement auctions, traditional auctioneers typically have not put in place a suitable mechanism that supports repetitive auctions effectively. In this paper, we empirically investigate what has taken place in repeated procurement auctions based on real world data from a major outsourcing company of MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) items in Korea. From this empirical study, we discovered the followings. First, we discovered that the repeated bidders contribute majority of all bids, and that the number of new entrants declined significantly as time passes. Second, repeated bidders become inactive and virtually leave the market, particularly if they fail to win in the auctions even though their bid prices were competitive. This implies that repeated bidders with lower winning rates have a higher possibility of becoming inactive. Third, the number of bidders along with the purchase amount and the bidder's previous winning rates are critical factors in determining both the winning bid price in the auction level and the bid price of each bidder. According to these research findings, we recognize that retaining a sufficient number of repeated bidders is crucial in the repeated procurement auction market. This motivates auctioneers to provide incentives to the repeated bidders to retain them in future auctions.

Debit payment is a low cost and low risk payment method in comparison with credit and pre-paid payment methods. In this study, we analyze the structures of Internet-based debit payment protocols and classified them into three types depending upon which party drives the authentication: Payment Gateway, customer's bank, or electronic merchant. For each type, real world protocols, SSL/D, SDT, and SET/D, respectively are exemplified. To compare the merchants' preference regarding these protocols, we have identified five distinctive factors that distinguish the characteristics of these three protocols: authentication method, risk of leaking bank account information, efficient recovery of failed authorization response, merchant's required implementation effort, and customer's ease of use. For these factors, the preferred features of each merchant are mapped to compute the preferences of the protocols.

Comparison shopping is one of the important ingredients in electronic commerce, because it saves time and efforts of searching for product information and costs. However, most shopping malls still rely on the simple data such as price and other descriptive specifications, and cannot support the services of comparing the exact cost which requires rule based computation such as delivery cost. The comparison of delivery costs requires tailored computation because each bookstore has different free shipping rules, delivery options, and shipping rates. The purpose of this paper is to propose a rule based comparison shopping framework using XRML(eXtensible Rule Markup Language) approach. We propose the architecture, named ConsiderD, of maintaining rules in the comparison portal site to be consistent with its original pages. We experiment the benefit of using the rule based exact computation in comparison of book buying with the result by estimated average price such as BestWebBuy.com does. The result shows that providing the benefit of rule based comparison is significant and the hidden information such as delivery cost can be effectively processed with XRML framework.

While e-procurement auction has helped firms to achieve lower procurement costs, auction mechanisms that prevail at present in procurement markets need to address an important issue that concerns the ability to maintain long term relationships with the partners, especially in repeated e-procurement settings. In this paper, we propose a Relationship Preserving Auction (RPA) mechanism that augments the conventional auction mechanism with a bidder relationship scoring model. Our proposed mechanism gives increased chances of winning to the bidders who have bidden at relatively competitive price but had comparatively less wins so far. Keeping these bidders in the auction over time will lead to more competitive bidding prices and eventually reduce the auctioneer's total procurement cost in repeated auctions. From simulation experiments, we show how RPA works under different bidders' behavior. We show that RPA is able to obtain lower procurement cost compared to conventional procurement auctions when bidders bid opportunistically and renege readily to other markets.

As third party logistic services become popular, the role of software agents increases in importance in terms of the logistics scheduling of buyers and sellers. To support many models in such a portal site focused on logistics, automatic formulation and modification of optimization models embedded in the multiple software agents is necessary. The stakeholders like manufacturers and third party deliverers have their objectives and constraints in terms of delivery requirements and resource limitations. Since a variety of situations require many combinations of models, it is not easy to prepare all the necessary models in advance. To resolve this issue, we propose the primitive model approach which identifies a base model first and then modifies it to meet the modeling requirements. A prototype architecture AGENT-OPT2 is designed with the capability of rule-based model modification. This framework is demonstrated with the cooperative delivery scheduling problems.

Effective measurements of Supply Chain Management (SCM) in the context of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) have become more important. In the existing SCM performance studies, there are three limitations. First, the SCM measures are not reconciled with the BSC. Second, SCM measures have not comprehensively considered the goals that can be achieved by SCM strategies and solutions. Third, the measures have not identified the characteristics of industry, product, and production strategy. In this paper, we propose a framework for the Balanced Supply Chain Scorecard that considers the literature on the BSC and SCM, SCM solutions, and product characteristics. We analyze the causal relationships between the SCM solutions and product characteristics against measures. The identified relationship between the measures and SCM solutions can be used to evaluate the impact of SCM solutions. Using a case study, we find that the importance of measures significantly depends on the product characteristics. This study can be used to expand the BSC into the area of Strategic Enterprise Management systems, thus to relate performance measures to business activities.

In electronic catalogs, commodities like computers and electronic equipment are specified as standard models even though a variety of possible alternative specifications can exist as a combination of selected options; therefore, customized configurations are essential to support various customers with individual needs. So the problem here is the selection of a standard model and reconfiguration with this selected model. An issue is that requirements may be fulfilled by more than one standard model. To develop an algorithm that can find the near minimum price without causing unacceptable computation effort, we devised the Standard Model Selection and Modification (SMSM) Algorithm. To establish the SMSM Algorithm, we propose the Concurrent Local Propagation procedure complemented with pruning capability owing to the nature of standard models. The effective strategies for selection of seed variables and stopping rules are devised through comparative experiments.

A comparison challenge approach is proposed as a form of challenger-activated, just-in-time advertising. To develop a framework for a comparison challenge, we propose a theory of comparison. Based on this theory, the CompareMe and CompareThem strategies are devised, and comparable objects are classified in terms of price and performance dominance as well as the scope of proximity. The idea is demonstrated with a comparison of PCs from five leading manufacturers. To assist in the planning of the comparison challenge, a mathematical programming model was formulated to maximize the value of comparison under the constraints of the comparison opportunity and budget. The model is applied to eight scenarios in terms of the range of comparing objects. We found the ad effect of comparison challenge to be substantially better than banners (4.75 times) and similarity-based comparisons (2.77 times), providing customers with better performance and reduced prices.

moIec&r-biology technology in constructing restriction maps, Optical Mapping, has been developed by Schwartz et al.