Intermediaries in inter-organisational networks: building a theory of electronic marketplace performance

Intermediaries such as e-Bay and Amazon arise when market system knowledge is dispersed amongst participants (e.g. buyers and suppliers), and generate revenue by providing value-added services to participants in addition to creating and managing the digital infrastructure. Consequently, such intermediaries (which we call electronic marketplaces) play a vital role in facilitating exchanges in networks characterised by disparate knowledge and are essential network orchestrators in peer-to-peer markets and intellectual property exchanges. However, there is a high failure rate associated with electronic marketplaces leading to questions as to the long-term sustainability of emerging inter-organisational networks characterised by dispersed knowledge. This paper draws on research in a number of disciplines as well as a study of eight electronic marketplaces to build a theory of electronic marketplace performance. In doing so, we identify key performance measures for electronic marketplaces as well as the strategic, structural and contextual factors that impact performance. We identify how these factors can be observed, and illustrate how the fit between strategic and contextual factors affects performance. We present our theory as hypotheses and provide the empirical indicators for the constituent constructs.