A Research On The Evolution Of Intermediation In Electronic Markets

The debate of disintermediation, reintermediation and dis-reintermediation have emerged with the development of electronic markets.According to the existing literature, this paper try to research the problem of the evolution of traditional intermediation in electronic markets.Based on the theories of labor division, transaction cost and asymmetric information, the following three problems are researched in this paper. The first is the emergence and evolution of intermediation. The second is the theoretical argumentation of electronic markets.And the third is the evolution of traditional intermediation in electronic markets.Based on relevant mathematical models, some useful conclusions are drawn.These conclusions show: the promotion of the level of specialization is an important condition to the emergence and evolution of intermediation. Further more, the direction of the labor division is vital to the evolution of intermediation.The vertical labor division leads to disintermediation. On the contrary, the horizontal labor division will lead to intermediation. Importantly, the effect of the horizontal labor division is more than the vertical labor division. So, under influence of labor division, the evolution of intermediation show the ways of disintermediation, reintermediation and dis-reintermediation in electronic markets.Transaction cost is a necessary condition to the emergence and evolution of intermediation. Certainly, it isn't a appropriate way to research the emergence and evolution of traditional intermediation in electronic markets.Asymmetric information is an important condition for the evolution of intermediation. Perfect information will lead to disintermediation. However, electronic markets don't bring us perfect information.In some parts of electronic markets, asymmetric information may be more serious than in traditional markets. The change of asymmetric information shall cause the evolution of intermediation to disintermediation or reintermediation or dis-reintermediation.Then, on the level of application study, the paper classifies the firms to labor-intensive firms, capital-intensive firms and knowledge-intensive firms. In electronic markets, each kind firm'intermediation has its evolved way. For the evolution of labor-intensive firms'intermediation, its trend is disintermediation. The trend is dis- reintermediation for the evolution of capital-intensive firms' intermediation. And the trend is reintermediation or electronic intermediation for the evolution of knowledge -intensive firms' intermediation.Lastly, according to the flow of consumption behavior, four kinds of intermediation are coming forth, they are information intermediary, search intermediary, credit intermediary and medium of exchange. Consumer's behaviors of information searching show the value of information intermediary and search intermediary that lead to their existence. The demands of security and convenience accelerate the evolution of medium of exchange. And the facts that consumers always want to make sure the online shop lead to the development of credit intermediary.Group buying make asymmetric information reduce in some kind of degree, so, some traditional intermediations may lost their value and be disintermediation. However, Group buying will lead to the appearance of some new kind of intermediations that cause the evolution of intermediation from disintermediation to reintermediation and dis-reintermediation.