[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

e-Business Strategies for Virtual Organizations
42
with discounted prices. Supplementing this service is the rental
car reservations service for a large number of worldwide
destinations offering a choice between providers such as Hertz,
Avis, Discount, Alamo, and Enterprise.
The company’s website, in addition to seeking retail customers,
urges suppliers to join the network of providers linked by this
portal. A common graphical interface and uniformity of display
help the user to quickly master the site instead of dealing with
and querying a multiplicity of sites to arrange a trip. If the
company can live up to, and retain, its claim to be the largest and
most comprehensive supplier of travel, car hire and accommodation
on the Web, it is difficult to see how others will long
resist joining the operation.
Auction models
While auctions have traditionally been conducted face to face,
there is nothing particularly new in allowing agents to bid at a
distance from an interested principal, or more recently, accepting
bids from pre-qualified buyers at a distance using telephone
lines.
The Internet, and in particular the Web, has brought the
potential for efficient and more widespread auctions into the
forefront of business once again, however. The celebrated case of
the Dutch Flower Auction is an early example of web technology
being applied to create a more efficient local market,
emulated by livestock marketspaces, while start-ups such as
eBay, AuctionNet and Onsale have popularized the notion
among individual buyers and sellers whose goods and finance
do not justify larger and more expensive auctions.
Auctions can be of many different kinds: Dutch auctions, regular
open cry auctions, sealed bid auctions, etc. Each type of auction
can further have many variations such as reserve prices,
information available to the bidders, tie breaking rules, etc. We
shall consider an overview of the types available for implementation.
Each of these types is currently found in operation
where they have been chosen to optimize different business
objectives such as best price, guaranteed sale, minimize collusion
possibility, and so on.
Once the strategy for widespread presence has been identified
virtual organizations need to address the specific structural
models of effective response which align with this business
strategy.