Performance evaluation model for buyer-carts in B2B EC

Abstract

Even though B2B EC is becoming popular, there have been not so much studies about performance evaluation methodology for B2B systems. In this paper, after analyzing buyer carts systematically focusing on the buyer's interactional efforts on the typical buying processes of each buyer cart, we propose a quantitative performance evaluation model. For this, we categorize buyer carts in B2B EC as s-cart, i-cart, and b-cart depending upon its residing sites: seller, intermediary, and buyer sites. And after proposing the desired features of buyer carts in B2B EC as identification, collection, trashing, ordering, payment, tracking, recording, purchasing decision support, and transmission of records to e-procurement systems, we derive a performance evaluation model by calculating detail subprocesses from the desired features' viewpoints. By setting variables from interviews of business buyers in 30 listed companies in Korea, we try to evaluate the performance of buyer-carts in B2B EC. In this paper, we suggest a new methodology of performance evaluation for B2B systems, and show that the b-cart platform is more efficient than other buyer carts especially in B2B EC.