Electronic Transportation Marketplaces: How Can Green-IS Help to Promote Sustainable Logistics?

Electronic transportation marketplaces (ETMs) are inter-organizational information systems that provide an economic platform for the exchange of logistics services between shippers, carriers, and freight forwarders. Despite the fact that some of these marketplaces have already been in operation for over twenty years they have not achieved any significant influence in the logistics services domain until now. In a survey of logistics platforms that are active in Germany we identify the tendencies in development, success factors, and shortcomings of the current ETMs. The survey also shows that there is a significant lack of elaborated IS in the ETM domain. Current ETMs do not serve as integrated trading places, but rather as simple blackboards for the exchange of information. As a result, the missing functionalities and the lack of service quality make the current ETMs unattractive and keep liquidity in the transportation services markets low. A suitable way to deal with this problem is to offer extended functionalities, such as integrated tour planning, tracking-and-tracing, route pricing, etc. in order to make the ETMs more appealing for the users.