Don Kampmeier, chief operating officer of Central Livestock Auctions in St. Paul, Minnesota, was auctioning swine long before there was a PC in every back office. So one feeder pig is as good as another, but a butcher hog is just one sale away from the breakfast table. A butcher hog must be bought in person from trusted sources, but feeder pigs flow perfectly through an online exchange. Computer components, the most liquid of all products sold between businesses online, share this quality of uniformity with feeder pigs. One microchip, like one feeder hog or one bale of recycled paper fibers, is as good as another.
Price is the only important difference between lots.
And there have been unforeseen benefits of moving feeder pig trade online. And happy, healthy pigs fetch higher prices. When the exchange serves buyers as well as sellers, as with Kampmeier's feeder pigs, B2B e-commerce thrives. By the same token, though, the idiosyncrasies of an industry and its products can impede the liquidity of e-commerce. Again, commodity-like products sell easily.