Resumen
This article focuses on the impact of the Information technology in creating a imbalance between the interest of buyers and suppliers. The advent of electronic commerce, however, has promised to change this balance of power by lowering the cost of searching for alternative and substitute products in a commodity. But electronic venues have not facilitated needs of buyers requiring products with custom characteristics. The recent attention given to mass customization illustrates suppliers' awareness of buyers' demands along these dimensions, as well as to the suppliers' own need to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Using the Web as a facilitator of buyer-created niche markets, custom mass-production (CMP) can be realized through an electronic broker that represents individual buyers in a multistage bargaining action. One can expect the efforts of suppliers to maintain higher margins will continue, and that the auction activity a CMP broker such as Custom Dealmaker provides will meet with interesting counterstrategies on the part of suppliers. It is also expected that the channel access a system such as Custom Dealmaker provides, with its ability to handle a large volume of buyers with complex product/service requirements, may encourage new entrants into the marketplace.