Know Your Why's How's - Towards a Contingency Model for Industrial E-Procurement

Abstract

This chapter uses traditional marketing and purchasing strategy models to forward a model for e-procurement. It maintains that there are two major classes of e-procurement solutions used in industry, both deriving from traditional marketing models: e-procurement solutions that focus on enhancing relationships to enable integration between buyer and seller, and solutions that are transaction-oriented and have their primary function in strengthening market forces, thus making industrial markets more competitive. It is argued that the e-procurement solutions used should be related to the purchasing strategies employed and the different steps of the purchasing process. We propose a model based on purchasing strategies that identify appropriate e-procurement solutions to be considered for different types of purchased items. This model can be used to evaluate purchasing initiatives, both from an academic and a practical perspective.