Online platforms perform as more or less active intermediaries in the interaction of multiple parties engaged in e-commerce. The first paper in this International Journal of Electronic Commerce issue, authored by Esko Penttinen, Merja Halme, Kalle Lyytinen, and Niko Myllynen, focuses on the business-to -business platforms that offer e-invoicing, facilitating transactions between the trading partners. Among several types of the highly successful platform business models, these belong to the class of connectivity platforms and may offer along with invoicing a range of associated value-added services. The principal research questions here are as follows: What are the categories of platform features that matter to the user firms? To what extent do they matter? How does the firm’s size influence the choice of a platform with certain features? The empirics are based on a Web survey and give answers —as well as generating new questions. A high potential of the expanded role of these platforms is to be noted as we move to the algorithmic computer-tocomputer transaction processing with smart contracts enacting more complex protocols. At the same time the platforms will be challenged by the blockchain solutions—unless they will manage to migrate in that direction. The next paper brings us to business-to-consumer e-commerce. Saar Kagan and Ron Bekkerman present a novel method of ad targeting on the Web while preserving individual privacy. Instead of the increasingly problematic individual profiling, the researchers’ method is grounded in profiling the aggregates of Website audiences based on their purchasing behavior. The authors train their classification model on an extensive purchase and visit data and find it predictive of the future behavior of the aggregate panels of audiences. With the advertising-driven business models highly likely to be hemmed in by the regulators in the pursuit of user privacy and their data ownership, this is an important line of research. With the offline companies moving some of their operations online, but also online firms finding it of advantage to have direct touch with their customers on the ground, omni-channel retailing has been increasingly upon us. With all its advantages on the front end, the logistical challenges of fulfillment often lead to the demise or scaling down of these business models. What to do? Steering the customers to the channel the retailer prefers for the transaction—while not antagonizing the customer—is a part of the solution. The authors of the next paper, Johannes Wollenburg, Andreas Holzapfel, Alexander Hübner, and Heinrich Kuhn, investigate how cross-channel steering of customers in the light of different orderfulfillment options is used and to what effect. The authors use grounded theory methodology to explore this new research arena and thus open it to further investigation. Their results are also of obvious practical merit. Two papers that strongly close this issue of International Journal of Electronic Commerce are based on formal economic models of online pricing. Lin Chen, GuofangNan, andMinqiangLi investigate the outcomes of themove by online retailers to the agency pricing model, where they provide a platform for the producers to sell their offerings, with a commission going to the retailer. The

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编者介绍

在参与电子商务的多方互动中，在线平台或多或少地扮演着活跃的中介角色。本期《国际电子商务杂志》的第一篇论文由 Esko Penttinen、Merja Halme、Kalle Lyytinen 和 Niko Myllynen 撰写，重点关注提供电子发票、促进贸易伙伴之间交易的企业对企业平台。在几种非常成功的平台商业模式中，这些属于连接平台类，可以提供一系列相关的增值服务并提供发票。这里的主要研究问题如下：对用户公司而言重要的平台功能类别有哪些？它们在多大程度上重要？公司的规模如何影响具有某些功能的平台的选择？经验是基于网络调查并给出答案——以及产生新问题。随着我们转向算法计算机对计算机交易处理，智能合约制定更复杂的协议，这些平台的扩展作用的巨大潜力值得关注。与此同时，这些平台将受到区块链解决方案的挑战——除非他们设法朝那个方向迁移。下一篇论文将我们带到企业对消费者电子商务。Saar Kagan 和 Ron Bekkerman 提出了一种新颖的网络广告定位方法，同时保护个人隐私。而不是越来越成问题的个人档案，研究人员的方法基于根据他们的购买行为来分析网站受众的总体情况。作者根据广泛的购买和访问数据训练了他们的分类模型，并发现它可以预测受众群体的未来行为。由于监管机构极有可能在追求用户隐私和数据所有权时限制广告驱动的商业模式，因此这是一个重要的研究方向。随着线下公司将部分业务转移到线上，同时在线公司发现直接与当地客户接触具有优势，全渠道零售越来越多地出现在我们身上。凭借其在前端的所有优势，履行的物流挑战通常会导致这些商业模式的消亡或缩小规模。该怎么办？将客户引导至零售商偏好的交易渠道——同时不与客户对抗——是解决方案的一部分。下一篇论文的作者 Johannes Wollenburg、Andreas Holzapfel、Alexander Hübner 和 Heinrich Kuhn 研究了如何根据不同的订单履行选项使用跨渠道引导客户以及产生什么效果。作者使用扎根理论方法来探索这个新的研究领域，从而为进一步研究打开大门。他们的结果也具有明显的实际价值。两篇强烈结束本期国际电子商务杂志的论文基于在线定价的正式经济模型。Lin Chen、Guofang Nan 和 MinqiangLi 调查了在线零售商转向代理定价模型的结果，在那里，他们为生产商提供了一个销售产品的平台，佣金则归零售商所有。这