Internet Enabled Reverse Auctions: A Literature Synthesis

Internet enabled Reverse Auctions (RAs) have been in use for more than a decade. RAs were primarily employed by firms as cost saving measure, but they are now increasingly being used to explore and expand their supply base. The use of RAs is hence multi-faceted and has evolved over years. This evolution has hence attracted wide attention from the research community. Many aspects of RAs including the auction format, visibility type, strategic implications of RAs on buyer-supplier relationship etc., have been well scrutinized. In this paper we put forward a framework which categorizes the empirical findings according to the chain of inherent processes involved in the implementation and conduction the RAs. This framework will assist researchers not only to categorize and map their findings to a proper methodical base, but also it will help them identify the gaps in the current theoretical understanding of RAs