Digital technology is the representation of information in bits, reducing the costs of collecting, storing, and parsing customer data. This has led to a reduction of five costs: Search costs, replication costs, transportation costs, tracking costs, and verification costs. In this article, we...

We empirically examine the trade-off between the benefits of buying online and the benefits of buying in a local retail store. How does a consumer's physical location shape the relative benefits of buying from the online world? We explore this problem using data from Amazon on the top selling...