LAUSR

Firms have available many forms of collaboration, including cooperatives or joint ventures, in this way leveraging their market power. Customers, however, are atomic agents with few mechanisms for collaborating, leading to an unbalanced buyer-supplier relationship and economic surpluses that shift to producers. Some group buying websites helped alleviate the problem by offering bulk discounts, but more advancements can be made with the emergence of technologies, such as the blockchain. In this article, we propose a customer-push e-marketplace built on top of Ethereum, where customers can aggregate their proposals, and suppliers try to outcompete each other in reverse auction bids to fulfil the order. Furthermore, smart contracts make it possible to automate many operational activities, such as payment escrows/release upon delivery confirmation, increasing the efficiency along the supply chain. The implementation of this network is expected to improve market efficiency by reducing transaction costs, time delays, and information asymmetry. Furthermore, concepts such as increased bargaining power and economies of scale, and their effects in buyer-supplier relationships, are also explored.