A collaborative platform for buyer coalition: Introducing the Awareness-based Buyer Coalition (ABC) system

A variety of buyer coalition schemes already exist in the current e-Commerce literature by which buyers form some sort of coalition in order to enjoy added discounts as a result of purchasing in larger bundles. One major problem in all existing schemes is that none of those schemes explicitly treat the coalition process as a collaborative business process; and as a result, the awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements are not explicitly recognized in the design process of the existing systems. This study proposes a conceptual framework for a buyer coalition system called the Awareness-based Buyer Coalition (ABC) system that allows a buyer to bid on the basis of various levels of awareness that s/he may have about other roles' actions/intentions. The study is an early attempt for explicitly considering awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of various roles within the buyer coalition process. The theoretical foundations of the study are rooted in the fields of Game Theory, e-Commerce, and Knowledge Management. The research methodology adopted for the study is design science. Various existing buyer coalition algorithms were reviewed and their strengths and weaknesses identified in terms of addressing the information-sharing needs of collaborating buyers. Furthermore, the existing literature on Knowledge Management was reviewed in order to identify an appropriate process model for the proposed buyer coalition framework with specific emphasis on awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of its collaborating actors. For validation of the proposed conceptual model simulation software was developed to demonstrate results of a variety of simulations for the proof of the concept.