Window shopping

Oz Shy

No 13-4, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract: The terms \"window shopping\" and \"showrooming\" refer to the activity in which potential buyers visit a brick-and-mortar store to examine a product but end up either not buying it or buying the product from an online retailer. This paper analyzes potential buyers who differ in their preference for after-sale service that is not offered by online retailers. For some buyers, making a trip to the brick-and-mortar store is costly; however, going to the store to examine the product has the advantage of mitigating the uncertainty as to whether the product will suit the buyer's needs. The model shows that the number of buyers engaged in window shopping behavior exceeds the optimal number, both under duopoly and under joint ownership of the online and walk-in store outlets.

Keywords: Consumer; behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-mic and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2013/wp1304.htm (text/html)
http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2013/wp1304.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedbwp:13-4

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Spozio ().