Metamarket - (often called an on-line e-marketplace or mall) is an aggregation of individual catalogs searchable on the Oracle database powering the OpenEntry server
OpenEntry's most powerful feature enables any business network (BN - such as a chamber of commerce, trade promotion organization, or industry association) to aggregate their members' catalogs into their own branded "metamarket" generating the visibility and credibility necessary for effective e-commerce. The way it works is simple:
- The BN enlists each of its members to create and maintain their own OpenEntry catalog. To help the members get started, the BN can provide training and technical assistance as well as computers and digital cameras (perhaps for a fee). It can also provide a standard template branded (with the proper layout, background color, and logo) for the BN. In many cases the BN can play the role of an Account Manager.
- Using the same OpenEntry client software used to create the individual catalogs, the BN builds an e-Marketplace by aggregating the individual catalogs of its members. Because the BN does not have to manage the product information, creating the metamarket is a very efficient process only requiring an hour or so to build/update an extensive metamarket with dozens or hundreds of catalogs containing thousands of products.
- The BN can charge its members an annual fee for participating in the metamarket in order to pool resources for promoting the entire network for example, by participating in trade shows and purchasing advertising in industry publications. It can also prepare special pages with a high rank on the search engines that have the results of an internal search - for example a search on www.Google.com for "fair trade candles" yields a #1 spot for the page www.openentry.com/ifat/EN/Fair-Trade_Candles.html that has more than a hundred candles from an internal search of the fair trade metamarket.
- Each metamarket automatically has built-in referral links to the products of the participating vendors. These referrals work for retail (B2C) transactions that appear on the PayPal payment notification e-mail. For wholesale, (B2B) the referral links identify the referrers on the PDF contract generated by theNegotiated Contract Tool. These permit the BN that builds the metamarket to receive commissions from generating orders for their members, an outcome desired by all parties.
Some examples of OpenEntry metamarkets are as follows:
* www.ExportSL.com - Chamber of Exporters of Sri Lanka
* www.COFTA.org - craft exporters from all over Africa
* www.catgen.com/women - global marketplace of women's enterprises
* www.camari.org - crafts from Ecuador
* www.FairTradeDirect.com - global wholesale marketplace for "fair trade"crafts.
Any vendor can participate in multiple metamarkets from just one dataset (besides their own individual web catalog). As an illustrative example, if a country had nine enterprises in three provinces, each vendor can be included simultaneously in the metamarket of the Provincial Chamber of Commerce, Industry Association, and National Export Board.
In other words, a trade promotion organization can build its own branded version of www.Alibaba.com, only transactional. A good example is the www.ExportSL.com by the National Chamber of Exporters of Sri Lanka.
A specialized organization with a large user base could aggregate many vendors into a B2C metamarket with many of the functions of Amazon's Marketplace. For example women's groups could band together to support the global metamarket for women producers at www.catgen.com/women that generates a 12% commission for referring trusting buyers.
