Public or Private? An Analysis of Supply Chain Choice of E-Markets

This paper develops some models to explore the choice of supply chain between public e-markets and private e-markets. We derive the expected profits of the retailer and the supplier and obtain the corresponding optimal strategies in private e-markets, i.e., the supply chain member owns the e-markets. We also analyze the profits of the supply chain in public e-markets, i.e., the e-markets is run by a third party. In addition, we compare the cost of operating supply chain's private e-markets with that of public e-markets. Finally, we indentify the conditions under which the supply chain operate their own e-markets.