The growth of Internet price search tools, notably shopbots, has reduced consumers’ search costs for price and some product characteristics. While a variety of analytic models predict that increased consumer search through shopbots will lower price levels among competing retailers, there is no...

Both theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that in markets withstandards competition, strong network effects can make the strong growstronger and, in some circumstances, even 'tip' the market towards asingle, winner-take-all standard. We theorize that in the presence oflow cost conversion...

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are a vital component of the Internet’s content delivery value chain, servicing nearly a third of the Internet’s most popular content sites. However, in spite of their strategic importance little is known about the optimal pricing policies or adoption drivers...

Recent IT research has analyzed how the performance of IT-enabled markets may differ from conventional markets. This literature has made two unexpected empirical findings. First, ITenabled markets for commodity goods exhibit significant price dispersion. Second, well-known retailers in these...

As the Internet develops into a robust channel for commerce, it will be important to understand the characteristics of electronic markets. Businesses, consumers, government regulators, and academic researchers face a variety of questions when analyzing these nascent markets. Will electronic...

Theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that in many markets with standards competition, network effects make the strong grow stronger and can “tip” the market toward a single, winner-take-all standard. We hypothesize, however, that this sort of standards-induced market dominance may be...

In spite of industry concerns, prior work has shown that Internet used book markets do not significantly cannibalize new book sales. In this research note we analyze similar data from markets for CDs and DVDs, goods that because of their digital characteristics may be more susceptible to...

Trust is particularly important in online markets to facilitate the transfer of sensitive consumer information to online retailers. In electronic markets, various proposals have been made to facilitate these information transfers. We develop analytic models of hidden information to analyze the...

Online product review networks help to transmit information that customers can use to evaluate product quality. The prior literature has found that, in the aggregate, better product reviews lead to higher sales. However, product review networks increasingly include an explicit social component...

Sponsored search accounts for 40% of the total online advertising market. These ads appear as ordered lists along with the regular search results in search engine results pages. The conventional wisdom in the industry is that the top position is the most desirable position for advertisers. This...