The purpose of this research is to study the efficiency of the Internet market, not provided to consumers by the existing traditional market. This research examines whether consumers properly understand the efficiency of the Internet market. The result from consumers perception on the efficiencies in the two market are as follows. First, consumers perceived the traditional market as having more product alternatives compared to the Internet market. Second, consumers perceived that the Internet market was more efficient in price dispersion and price change Third, the Internet market was considered more efficient in searching and travel time, and in the search cost. Finally, the traditional market was considered as a better provider of the information about product function, feature, reality, usage and service compared to the Internet market. On the contrary, the Internet market turned out to be more effective in providing product information, price information and trading information compared to the traditional market. Therefore consumers perceived the traditional market of having more information.
Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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v.27
no.3
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pp.75-92
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2002
This paper is concerned with proposing a new market strategy for the segmented markets of the Internet stock trading. Many companies are providing various services for customers. However, the internet stock trading market is glowing rapidly absorbing a wide variety of customers showing different tastes and demographic information, so that it is necessary for us to investigate specific strategy for the segmented markets. General strategy so far in the Internet stock trading market has been to lower transaction fee according to the market trend. As the advent of rapidly enlarging market, however, more specific strategies need to be suggested for the segmented markets. In this respect, this paper applied a self-organizing map (SOM) to 83 questionnaire data collected from the Internet stock trading market in Korea, and obtained meaningful results.
With the progress of Internet and e-commerce, there have been many researches on the market efficiency of the Internet markets using real price data. Contrary to the common expectations by many economists, most of the previous researches have fatted to prove that the Internet market is more efficient than the conventional market. This paper empirically analyzes the pricing behavior of Internet and conventional retailers in South Korea. We have collected real price data on CDs and TVs from various types of retailers, from which we have analyzed three aspects of pricing behavior : price level, price change over time, and price dispersion across the retailers. We have found that the average prices of CDs and TVs at the Internet retailers are lower than those at the conventional retailers. We have also found that there is a close association between the behaviors (e.g., magnitude and timing of changes) of TV prices at the Internet retailers and those at the conventional retailers. It has been observed that the range of the CD prices at the internet retailers is less than a half of the range at the conventional retailers, which can be considered as an evidence of a relatively stronger price competition at the Internet market compared with the conventional market.
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.