In the U.S., all three types of markets are still in the development stages at present, with various companies currently trying to determine, through trial and error, what forms they will take, especially the collaborative type of market. Looking first at public markets, e-marketplaces will not take shape, and member companies will not make active use of them, if all the organizers do is to establish their necessary information infrastructure. Organizers must make buyers and sellers capable of conducting business more efficiently via the e-marketplace by having payment and distribution organs in place, in addition to the information infrastructure. For this reason, a public marketplace will not succeed unless the member companies attempt to form a marketplace and the operators make efforts to reflect actual services in that marketplace. In addition, it is important for the marketplace organizers to make clear to each company that their participation in the marketplace will have tremendous benefits as regards the development of their business.
Private marketplaces appear to be growing in the U.S., as well as public marketplaces.
Speaking in numerical terms, private marketplaces are growing at about three times the rate of public marketplaces. In many cases, and this includes IBM, companies have a need to improve the efficiency of their procurement operations, as well as to give form to their supply chains, and are building marketplaces around these axes. Moreover, the objective is not simply to transact business electronically. Let's take the example of IBM, which operates a marketplace with some 21,000 companies involved in it. This marketplace has an incredible real-world effect on the development and manufacturing of the ThinkPad laptop computers.