Introduction

A number of authors have helped to demonstrate the extent to which performance of e-commerce firms is based on their ability to design, control and manage an enormous amount of information on an ongoing basis so that consumers can easily grasp and understand goods and services provided. Thanks to the wide range of technologies made available by the Internet, along with methods for appropriating these technologies, highly diversified economic infrastructures and business models, autonomizing specific economic functions, can be mobilized for the purpose of marketing a single product or service.

Highlighting and revealing the informational aspect of transactions is useful but not helpful enough in explaining current market configurations or the strategies that economic agents deploy. Buzzel (1985) shows, for example, how distributors and intermediaries acquired power over producers and gained more influence as they moved from wholesalers engaged in buying and selling products to more complex forms of intermediation and prescription mobilizing information and communication technologies. More specifically, allowing consumers to compare products directly without having to rely on supposedly knowledgeable experts, the Internet changed the traditional role of the intermediary; it no longer functions as just a distributor or expert consultant but also regulates transactions, promoting and prescribing goods and services. As a consequence, many authors have attempted to describe and provide characterization of the various forms of intermediation (Spulber, 1996 and 1999; Chircu and Kauffman, 1999; Brousseau, 2002). For example, Gensollen (1999) identifies several different actors who can play an intermediary role: attractors, aggregators, converters (i.e. those who convert an audience into customers) and prescribers.