Consumer Price Search and Platform Design in Internet Commerce

Michael Dinerstein, Liran Einav, Jonathan Levin and Neel Sundaresan

No 20415, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Search frictions can explain why the "law of one price" fails in retail markets and why even firms selling commodity products have pricing power. In online commerce, physical search costs are low, yet price dispersion is common. We use browsing data from eBay to estimate a model of consumer search and price competition when retailers offer homogeneous goods. We find that retail margins are on the order of 10%, and use the model to analyze the design of search rankings. Our model explains most of the effects of a major re-design of eBay's product search, and allows us to identify conditions where narrowing consumer choice sets can be pro-competitive. Finally, we examine a subsequent A/B experiment run by eBay that illustrates the greater difficulties in designing search algorithms for differentiated products, where price is only one of the relevant product attributes.

JEL-codes: D12 D22 D47 D83 L13 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ict, nep-ind and nep-mkt
Note: IO PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Published as Dinerstein, Michael, Liran Einav, Jonathan Levin, and Neel Sundaresan. 2018. "Consumer Price Search and Platform Design in Internet Commerce." American Economic Review, 108 (7): 1820-59.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Consumer Price Search and Platform Design in Internet Commerce (2018)
Working Paper: Consumer Price Search and Platform Design in Internet Commerce (2014)
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