# E-Marketplace State of the Art and Trends: VR-ZOCO--An Architectural Proposal for the Future
## 2 Electronic Marketplaces  
### Electronic Marketplace Definition  
The advent of the technological revolution in recent years has spurred the extensive expansion of e-commerce, marking an irreversible trend that has given rise to the inception of novel business paradigms. A thriving business model with a steady growth in sales within e-commerce is the electronic marketplace, also referred to as e-marketplace, e-commerce marketplace, marketplace platform, or e-commerce portal. We refer to this concept as EM for the remainder of this article. While the precise definition and classification of any emerging phenomenon are crucial to its development and provide the basis for future research, the recent emergence of the electronic markets (EMs) phenomenon has led to a lack of consensus within the academic and scientific community regarding its unique definition [20]. This is due to the abundance of EM models [11]. Nevertheless, several efforts in this direction can be found in the scientific literature in the field of information systems [6; 20; 21; 22]. [PERSON] et al. [20] defined EM from two different perspectives, an institutional one and a social one. From the institutional perspective, EM was defined as a means or mechanism for organizing and facilitating transactions; from the social perspective, EM was defined as a community in which buyers and sellers meet. Both definitions were combined by the authors to provide a single definition: _electronic marketplaces are places where buyers and sellers conduct transactions by electronic means_. As a contribution to this definition, [21] states that EM also _implicitly involves trade financingorganizations, logistics companies, taxation authorities, and regulators._ [PERSON] et al. [15], in a definition of EM, specifies the transactions that occur in the portal between buyers and sellers, noting the _exchange of goods, services, and information online._ [PERSON] et al. [23] defines the concept of EM from an information systems perspective as _an interorganizational information system that allows the participating buyers and sellers to exchange information about prices and product offerings, perform payments associated with market transactions, and provide institutional infrastructure._  
As with any complex and emerging concept, each new research effort conducted within the realms of information systems, economics, and marketing has contributed in some capacity to the definition of EM. The current state of the art in EM research reveals a diverse array of studies, which have been categorized into distinct groups [22], including general electronic market theory, market efficiency, pricing strategies, search costs, product dynamics, market structure, operational performance, and key research inquiries. Furthermore, the definition of the concept of EM also depends on its intended purpose or use, as well as specific factors related to that purpose. These factors are used to classify EMs [20]: number of participants, roles of the actors, relationship dimensions, participant behavior, ownership, industry scope, market mechanisms, products, power asymmetries, and fee structures. Based on the above, we focused on the EMs that connect buyers (or consumers) with sellers (or suppliers or providers) in a single ecosystem, by (1) allowing them to offer their products and information about them, along with the price on the seller's side and to access this information on the buyer's side; (2) in case of agreement, providing a mechanism to carry out commercial transactions with buy-it-now (BIN) or shopping cart functionalities. There are also other participants in the portal that support the whole process, such as trade finance organizations, payment providers, logistics companies, platform administrators, and EM owners or facilitators.