There have been many claims that the Internet represents a nearly frictionless market. This paper extends the empirical results on online retailing by studying prices for nearly homogenous services - holiday packages - matched across conventional and Internet channels. On first sight, lower...

The General Systems Theory is one of the most important points of view nowadays. Now, its concepts could be applied in a various number of sciences including Consumer Sciences. The complexity of the product, the different way in which it can be seen and also the exponentially diversifying...

The impact of product variety on welfare has received little attention in the electronic commerce literature. The problem with product variety is that more variety does not necessarily imply higher welfare. This paper finds the conditions under which more variety, if caused by lower fixed costs,...

This paper examines the relation between prices in conventional stores and on the Internet. Main results from the theoretical analysis are i) we expect a discrete fall in prices in conventional stores as the share of the population with access to Internet reaches a critical level, ii) the...

The recent stagnation of electronic commerce highlights the need to understand contemporary online consumer behavior. This study incorporates current user demographics and emerging Internet activities to dynamically model the determinants of two key measurements of recent online shopping, a...

There have been many claims that the Internet represents a nearly frictionless market. This paper extends the empirical results on online retailing by studying prices for nearly homogenous services - holiday packages - matched across conventional and Internet channels. On first sight, lower...

Development of secured encryption gateways for safe transfer of information over the web, online transactions wrote a new chapter in the history of E-Business Development. Advent of E-mail and printable E-receipts further solidified the conduct of online web business and transactions as a...

While online consumers are less concerned than traditional consumers about firm location, they may be more concerned about unobservable quality and, to signal this, online retailers rely more on advertising than traditional retailers. Imperfect price competition may arise because of vertical...

This paper analyzes the competitive interplay of prices amongst retail channels: offline (brick-and-mortar) and online (such as retailers’ websites and online marketplaces). We find evidence of a close competitive relationship between the two channels, in which prices correspond tightly across...

This study investigates the effects of the Commonwealth of Virginia's ban on direct wine shipments from out-of-state sellers on wine prices and variety available to consumers in the greater McLean, Virginia area. Our results indicate that Virginia's direct shipment ban reduces the varieties of...