Auctions are secular institutions used in commercial relationships between individuals and organizations. They provide great flexibility to the purchasing process, increasing negotiations possibilities for buyers and sellers. They have been used successfully in the Internet, on an increasing basis both in B2B and G2B electronic commerce, mostly through reverse auctions. However, its one-dimensional view reduces negotiation to lower price practices and may occasionally produce undesirable results. In this paper, we propose a multi-criteria decision-making approach, based on Multi-attribute Utility Theory, as an alternative for the adoption of multi-attribute reverse auctions, adding value to Brazilian Public Buying Organizations.
public purchasing; multi-attribute reverse auctions; decision analysis; multi-attribute utility theory
