With the advance of new technologies, various organizations have actively utilized digitalization strategies, and digital procurement has undergone a development process since the end of the first Internet hype around the turn of the millennium (Wirtz B.W., 2021). Therefore, many studies on digital purchasing and procurement have been conducted over the previous decades. However, a limited amount of literature focused on the impact of digitalization on purchasing excellence based on different purchasing activities. The links of varying purchasing activities in digital transformation have also been given little attention. Moreover, it has been found that most literature is focused on the impact of digitalization on supplier relationship and supplier selection, cost analysis, and supplier negotiation, which have a close interrelation with the other purchasing activities and have a significant impact on purchasing excellence are relatively speaking less examined by previous scholars (only 17.9% of the literature the author reviewed covered this topic systematically), and the research method is either theoretical or mathematical, not many studies used case study and empirical research method. With the aim to fill the research gap and provide both theoretical and empirical significance to the research on the functions and future development of digital purchasing, the author has done a systematic literature review of 168 academic papers and books; the author critically discusses three crucial sub-topics: Cost analysis and the TCO method, business negotiation and supplier selection, as well as digitalization in purchasing and procurement, that are interrelated and closely related to the main topic of the thesis, and further examines the functions of digital tools on these segments with semi-structured interviews and case study empirical research at a leading automotive company-one of the top 10 global automotive suppliers headquartered in France. The objective of the thesis is to act as a supplement to the existing studies and use both theoretical and empirical research methods to examine the functions of the digital tools in different aspects of purchasing, such as in cost analysis and supplier management, which have a direct and indirect impact on the supplier negotiation preparation and results. By studying the cost analysis method, the functions, advantages, and disadvantages of the digital tools in different purchasing activities at the company, and their impact on supplier negotiation, the thesis also aims to provide suggestions on the future developments of digital purchasing
