The articles Getting smart about supply chain management" and "Building enduring consortia" argue that the performance of business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces has been disappointing because they haven’t focused on collecting and distributing information from and about their participants. Yet for the participants, the articles observe, it is no easy matter to derive long-term value from better information.

To ascertain the perceptions of the people who actually use and run B2B marketplaces, McKinsey surveyed hundreds of companies in the third quarter of the year 2000 (see sidebar, "About the research"). Among other things, the survey sought to answer these questions: How much and what kind of value do B2B e-marketplaces offer? Is it long-term value? If it doesn’t come from sharing information, what is its source?

Our work shows that buyers, investors, and marketplace executives each define value differently. Certainly, for buyers to obtain real long-term value from a marketplace, it has to do more than merely cut suppliers’ margins; to be successful, it must offer information and capabilities that its customers can use throughout the purchasing process.

In general, marketplaces perform either of two functions: undertaking a particular purchasing activity for customers or giving them the information and the tools they need to perform a particular function more effectively. Our survey identified five distinct e-marketplace models (exhibit), which differ in the services they stress and the capabilities they enhance—and thus in the financial results they deliver. Two of the models focus on collecting and distributing information, three on bringing down purchase costs and improving transactional efficiencies. Over time, the models will probably lose some of their distinctiveness.

Marketplaces that exemplify the information-based model, for project/specification managers, help buyers and suppliers collaborate on design and other high-value decisions. Such marketplaces cut costs by helping to set appropriate specifications and by streamlining interactions among the parties lying along complex value chains. Marketplaces based on the second model, for supply consolidators, offer parametric search capabilities and price data that help customers trade off cost against quality. Both project/specification managers and supply consolidators develop and control information that would be very hard to duplicate; in addition, supply consolidators offer highly customized, difficult-to-replicate tools.

As for marketplaces based on the other three models—for liquidity creators, aggregators, and transaction facilitators—they focus on benefits such as reducing waste and supplier margins and increasing the efficiency of transactions. Unfortunately, these benefits aren’t hard to replicate, nor do they encourage collaboration between buyers and suppliers or relieve bottlenecks or other pain points in the supply chain. As a result, even the commonly touted virtues of liquidity and scale won’t necessarily help such marketplaces avoid commodification and thus the likelihood that buyers will gravitate to competitors whose e-enabling tools provide more valuable benefits.

Only B2B marketplaces that collect and exploit information not available elsewhere, our study shows conclusively, can provide anything more than short-term purchasing benefits. The sooner buyers act on this insight, the more chance they will have to shape and reshape their marketplaces without losing ground to competitors. As the marketplaces mature, buyers will want to preserve their flexibility in handling the four categories of purchases: services and direct, indirect, and capital goods.

And remember: however shrewdly buyers select their marketplaces, they must also have strong internal strategic-purchasing capabilities.