Title: e-Fair: Aggregation in e-Commerce for Exploiting Economies of Scale,
Abstract: In recent years, many new and interesting models of successful online
business have been developed, including competitive models such as auctions,
where the product price tends to rise, and group-buying, where users cooperate
obtaining a dynamic price that tends to go down. We propose the e-fair as a
business model for social commerce, where both sellers and buyers are grouped
to maximize benefits. e-Fairs extend the group-buying model aggregating demand
and supply for price optimization as well as consolidating shipments and
optimize withdrawals for guaranteeing additional savings. e-Fairs work upon
multiple dimensions: time to aggregate buyers, their geographical distribution,
price/quantity curves provided by sellers, and location of withdrawal points.
We provide an analytical model for time and spatial optimization and simulate
realistic scenarios using both real purchase data from an Italian marketplace
and simulated ones. Experimental results demonstrate the potentials offered by
e-fairs and show benefits for all the involved actors.