Reducing buyer search costs: implications for electronic marketplaces
Management Science - Special issue: Frontier research on information systems and economics
The Economics of Electronic Commerce
The Economics of Electronic Commerce
Frictionless Commerce? A Comparison of Internet and Conventional Retailers
Management Science
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Shopbots are Internet agents that automatically search for information pertaining to price and quality goods and services. We study the impact on prices and price dispersion of such software agents. It is shown that price dispersion is a phenomenon which is independent of heterogeneity in E-tailers characteristics that is even if E-tailers provide the same service offerings, price dispersion remains whenever a captive market exists. Moreover, an increase in information does not reduce price dispersion but in general will increase it.