Benefits of electronic marketplaces across diverse, largely consumer-facing, competitive industries have been in the form of lower transaction costs, transparent price discovery, and improved coordination. This article explores the benefits of electronic marketplaces under oligopsony, which generally encompasses relational marketing as well. With producer – first handler agricultural markets as the context, the article draws from literature on electronic marketplaces, transaction costs, and seller-buyer dependence. Based on survey data, an exploratory factor analysis is conducted to understand the elements of relational marketing between farmers and traders. Subsequently, transaction costs of marketing in a physical agricultural marketplace are compared with those in its electronic counterpart. Results did not indicate significant reduction in transaction costs in the e-marketplaces. Reasons for such findings are logically deduced to be a consequence of opportunistic traders not sharing marketing-related information with farmers, notwithstanding dependence of the latter on traders for such informational needs. Implications for policymakers, third-party electronic marketplace providers are discussed for the specific context, besides indicators for similar other market structures.

电子市场在多样化的、主要面向消费者的、竞争性行业中的好处在于降低交易成本、透明的价格发现和改进的协调。本文探讨了寡头垄断下电子市场的好处，这通常也包括关系营销。以生产者-第一处理者农业市场为背景，本文借鉴了有关电子市场、交易成本和买卖双方依赖性的文献。基于调查数据，进行探索性因素分析，了解农民与贸易商之间关系营销的要素。随后，将实体农产品市场的营销交易成本与电子市场的交易成本进行比较。结果并未表明电子市场的交易成本显着降低。此类发现的原因在逻辑上被推断为机会主义贸易商未与农民分享营销相关信息的结果，尽管后者依赖贸易商来满足此类信息需求。除了类似其他市场结构的指标外，还针对特定背景讨论了对政策制定者、第三方电子市场提供商的影响。