Buying Online: Sequential Decision Making by Shopbot Visitors

Uwe Dulleck (), Franz Hackl (), Bernhard Weiss and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer ()
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Bernhard Weiss: Department of Economics, University of Linz, Linz, Austria

No 225, Economics Series from Institute for Advanced Studies

Abstract: In this article we propose a two stage procedure to model demand decisions by customers who are balancing several dimensions of a product. We then test our procedure by analyzing the behavior of buyers from an Austrian price comparison site. Although in such a market a consumer will typically search for the cheapest price for a given product, reliability and service of the supplier are other important characteristics of a retailer. In our data, consumers follow such a two stage procedure: they select a shortlist of suppliers by using the price variable only; finally, they trade off reliability and price among these shortlisted suppliers.

Keywords: E-commerce; price comparison; decision theory; heuristics; seller reputation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-mkt
Date: 2008-09
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http://www.ihs.ac.at/publications/eco/es-225.pdf First version, 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Buying Online: Sequential Decision Making by Shopbot Visitors (2008)
Working Paper: Buying Online: Sequential Decision Making by Shopbot Visitors (2008)
Working Paper: Buying Online: Sequential Decision Making by Shopbot Visitors (2008)
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