The Internet has dramatically reduced search costs for customers through tools such as shopbots. The conventional wisdom is that this reduction in search costs will increase price competition leading to a decline in prices and profits for online firms. In this paper, we provide an argument for...

An important phenomenon on the Internet has been the emergence of "infomediaries" or Internet referral services such as Autobytel.com and Carpoint.com in the automobile industry, Avviva.com in real estate and Healthcareadvocates.com in medicine. These services offer consumers the opportunity to...