Digitization in B2B Buying and Selling

Business-to-business transactions include several processes that can be digitized by buyers and suppliers. While prior studies have examined the performance impacts of using digital technologies, they have not investigated the alignment of such digitization between transacting parties. In this paper, we empirically examine the use of different market-based digital technologies by buyers and suppliers for these processes, and analyze the extent to which the digitization of different processes is aligned between transacting buyers and suppliers. Our field study is based on surveys of transacting agents in 174 buyer-supplier dyads about their use of digital technologies. The results indicate that there are misalignments for some processes in both the specific digital technologies buyers and suppliers use, and in the extent to which each of them uses digital technologies. By addressing these misalignments, buyers and suppliers could potentially realize greater benefits from digitized transaction processes.