Abstract
The Internet is transforming and reshaping the nature of interorganizational commerce by enabling many new types of interfirm electronic exchanges. A B2B exchange is defined as a new organizational form residing in digital space that acts as an interfirm intermediary that enables firms to conduct and engage in any-to-any online relations. This chapter proposes a classification scheme for B2B exchanges that attempts to capture the chaos and complexity of today’s online B2B relations. This typology integrates several theories of interfirm relations from the information systems, marketing, and organizational economics literatures to propose a parsimonious but comprehensive taxonomy that encompasses neutral markets (many-to-many) and dyadic relations (few-to-few), and also the concept of biased relations, monopolies (few-to-many) and monopsonies (many-to-few). This chapter discusses the implications of the proposed taxonomy for interorganizational eCommerce that ensue from the alternative types of B2B exchanges. Furthermore, the influence of product, organizational, and market characteristics on B2B