Consumer search in electronic markets: an experimental analysis of travel services

Anssi Öörni

European Journal of Information Systems, 2003, vol. 12, issue 1, 30-40

Abstract: Electronic markets are frequently touted to be highly efficient. The prevailing hypothesis is that very low information search costs will enable buyers to expand their product information search and comparison beyond what is feasible in conventional markets. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the relative efficiency of product search in current travel service markets. We report the results of our analysis based on an experimental setting with 92 subjects. Our conclusions tend to disagree with previous predictions about the efficiency of electronic markets. The electronic markets observed were found to be at best as efficient as their conventional counterparts. Our results suggest that poor availability of product information and a lack of systems integration severely limit the efficiency of consumer search in present electronic markets.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000450 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:tjisxx:v:12:y:2003:i:1:p:30-40

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjis20

DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000450

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Information Systems is currently edited by Par Agerfalk

More articles in European Journal of Information Systems from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().