"Marketplace" or "mall"? : business model and strategy for a startup in China's B2B e-commerce market

E-commerce companies face a strategic decision to choose the business model. Should they choose the Marketplace model, an online Intermediary on which suppliers sell their products directly to buyers? Should they choose Mall model, on which intermediaries purchase products from suppliers and sell them to buyers? Or should they choose the Hybrid model, which blends the Marketplace and Mall models. While most literature focuses on the Marketplace model and discusses its pricing and efficiency issues, Hagiu and Wright's papers focus on the tradeoff between Marketplace and Mall, and more importantly, propose six criteria to decide the right model. My thesis will apply the theory to choose the right business model for an E-commerce startup and design the strategies to implement this model. My thesis will be a practical contribution to this field. My thesis will examine the current E-commerce market, analyze the tradeoffs of different models, choose the right model for the startup, and recommend strategies to implement this model.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Lin, Chen, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael A. Cusumano.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99000

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/99000