Implementing B2B platforms for industry clusters - inspired by a case study from China

Abstract: The ongoing development of E-commerce has changed the world dramatically. As an enabler of costs reduction and efficiency accelerator, the implementation of E-commerce is not limited to Business to Consumer (B2C) transactions but also spread to Business to Business (B2B) online transactions. This thesis focus on the implementation of B2B platforms in the concrete context of industry clusters. A case study based on a typical Chinese industry cluster has been explored in this research and two practices of platforms in the area have been described in detail, which are Electrical trading platform of China and 8m platform. Thorough discussions on these two practices are presented, including the weakness and strengths for each. In exploring the potential improvements, a new concept of Physical Internet (PI) has been introduced and discussed, including its sub-concepts of open hubs and PI-containers. Besides, regarding the trouble of attracting third party logistics to the platform, analysis on pricing strategies has been conducted to provide potential solutions.