E-Business Models
Business-to-Business (B2B)
In Business-to-Business (B2B) model, business transactions are conducted over public or private networks, including public and private transactions that use the Internet. These transactions include financial transfers, on-line exchanges, auctions, delivery of products and services, supply-chain activities, and integrated business networks.
Organization: Staples
Staples, Inc. founded the office supplies superstore industry when they opened their first store in Brighton, Massachusetts on May 1, 1986. Today, Staples is the world's leading seller of office products with $13 billion in sales for 2003. Headquartered west of Boston in Framingham, Massachusetts, Staples' 60,000 associates make it easy for businesses of all sizes to buy the supplies, business machines, technology, and services they need to run their office. Staples operate three business segments: North American Retail, North American Delivery, and European Operations (www.staples.com).
In 1999, the company established three online operations - Staples.com, for small businesses; Quill.com, for vertical industries such as law, medicine, and education; and StaplesLink.com, for contract customers. By the end of the company's fiscal 2000, Staples' combined e-commerce initiatives had a million registered users and had generated more than $512 million in online sales, nearly five times the revenue of the previous year (Young, 2001).
Several features Staples.com offers their on-line customers are:
1. Detailed reports on the customer's expenditures that help them track costs and aid them in negotiating more-favorable contract pricing.
2. Real-time inventory availability so the customers can tell immediately when an item is going to s ...