Marketspace

Marketspace - an information and communication based electronic exchange environment - is a relatively new concept in marketing. Since physical boundaries no longer interfere with buy/sell decisions, the world has grown into several industry specific marketspaces which are integration of marketplaces through sophisticated computer and telecommunication technologies. The term marketspace was introduced by Rayport and Sviokla in 1994^{[citation needed]} (see Rayport, Jeffrey F. and John J. Sviokla, "Managing in the Marketspace," Harvard Business Review, Nov/Dec 1994, Vol. 72, Issue 6, p. 141-150) to distinguish between electronic and conventional markets. In a marketspace, information and/or physical goods are exchanged, and transactions take place through computers and networks.

These networks consist of Blogs (and the Comments), Forum threads, and micro-blogging services like Twitter. Businesses and their customers are enabled to create conversations and two-way communications about products and services. These conversations may also happen outside the sphere of control of a given business, when a marketing campaign or customer-service issue captures the attention of web-savvy consumers.

Marketspace Pty.Ltd. was registered as an Australian Company (A.C.N. 068 231 158) on February 15, 1995. The company was a venture of the Shomega Group (Show-Ads) who had tight, long standing ties with the advertising and retail sectors in Australia. The service Marketspace provided was an online shopping mall through which customers could view and browse products offered by the retailers Shomega already dealt with. The service launched with several high profile clients including Myer and Target, however purchase of goods was not possible and the service, arguably well ahead of its time, never gained traction.

References

Rayport and Sviokla (1995), Exploiting the virtual value chain, Havard Business Review