Abstract
Enlightened agribusiness strategic vision and effectiveness can be achieved when electronic commerce related concepts, guidelines and tools are suitably applied as directed by a thorough and systematic approach. The main objective of this paper is to propose a generic architecture for analyzing and modeling Virtual Agricultural Market (VAM) systems. The VAM architecture provides a framework to offer a set of generic functionalities, in a stakeholder-independent, service-independent and interoperable way. It is built upon the requirements of openness, modularity, scalability and reusability. Furthermore, it caters to business, computational and technology issues for the trading, importation and exportation of perishable agricultural products in local, regional, national or European Union agricultural market level. An evaluation approach, based on a number of factors is suggested for the vigorous implementation and use of the Internet-based VAM system. The VAM system can help the European agricultural market sector win the challenge against competitors in terms of business transaction efficiency, cost reduction and improved customer services.