Our use of the Internet and our entire electronic commerce strategy will allow us to develop strong, reliable partnerships with the very best suppliers in the world. Those partnerships will enable Visteon to remain on the leading edge of product development, systems integration and customer service. Internet retailing has already achieved widespread acceptance with millions of on-line consumers. Visteon's investigation into the opportunities associated with Internet bidding began in January when managers began exploring how purchasing operations could more fully benefit from the information superhighway. We incorporated their suggestions and addressed their concerns in designing our process.
Suppliers can access the bidding site via a standard Web browser and a password.
Once they are on-line, they will be able to view the prices being bid for a particular commodity. They will not see the names of the other organizations involved in the on-line bidding. They will be able to submit new bids throughout the event in the strictest confidentiality. Unlike target pricing, where a customer typically sets a target price for a commodity, suppliers bidding in today's event will help set a real market price for the technologies and commodities being sourced. But market price is not the only determining factor in a sourcing decision, Marslender stresses.