M. Fritz, et al. / International Food and Agribusiness Management Review Volume 7, Issue 1, 2004
sophisticated negotiation tools for ‘Requests for Quote (RFQ)’, Amphire and
Foodtrader offer individualized shop environments for vendors’ catalogues,
Dairy.com actively matches ‘Requests for Quotes’ with offers that reflect actual spot
market characteristics for dairy commodities.
Expansion ofValue-added Services
A core development strategy in the expansion and improvement of value added
services deals with improvements in process efficiency through logistics support and
customer system integration. Other value-added services involve features for
‘Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR)’, business
relationship management, e-learning support or the provision of focused and
individualized management support systems. Ordersmart, a platform that sustains
trade activities between restaurants and suppliers in the San Francisco area offers
individualized management support through service systems for all major elements
of the restaurants’ management processes, including inventory management,
accounting, or recipe calculations.
Other distinguished but less frequently utilized lines of development (secondary
development lines) focus on the establishment of partnerships with providers of
platform technology, international expansion, or improvements in sector
competence. It is especially the large platforms such as Transora that have
partnerships with providers of technology like, e.g., Ariba, Oracle, or Sun. The
expansion of services into the international community has been a focus
development of platforms like Foodtrader, Agribuys, WWRE, GNX, and Transora.
Initiatives to improve sector competence may involve a focused employment
initiative regarding food industry professionals as known for the industry
independent platforms Foodtrader or Agribuys.
Platform Development and Consequences for Sector Organization
Baseline Approach
Electronic trade platforms are often related to a possible impact on the market
structure (e.g. Wigand, Benjamin, 1995, Giaglis, Klein, O’Keefe, 1999). This
paragraph takes the perspective on the agri-food sector and aims at analyzing the
potential impact of evolving trade platforms on the sector’s organization. The
discussion of implications of electronic trade platforms for the agri-food sector’s
organization builds on
■ the platform development strategies (section 4) and
■ emerging agri-food platform models.
The development strategies show principal platform evolvements during the 2000 /
2002 period and allow for projections on future development directions of platforms
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