IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pup/chapts/7523-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Introduction to The Economics of E-Commerce: A Strategic Guide to Understanding and Designing the Online Marketplace

In: The Economics of E-Commerce: A Strategic Guide to Understanding and Designing the Online Marketplace

Author

Listed:
  • Nir Vulkan

    (Said Business School, Worcester College, University of Oxford)

Abstract

Despite the recent misfortunes of many dotcoms, e-commerce will have major and lasting effects on economic activity. But the rise and fall in the valuations of the first wave of e-commerce companies show that vague promises of distant profits are insufficient. Only business models based on sound economic propositions will survive. This book provides professionals, investors, and MBA students the tools they need to evaluate the wide range of actual and potential e-commerce businesses at the microeconomic level. It demonstrates how these tools can be used to assess a variety of existing applications. Advances in web-based technology--particularly automation and delegation technologies such as smart agents, shopping bots, and bidding elves--support the further growth of e-commerce. In addition to enabling consumers to conduct automated comparisons and sellers to access visitors' background information in real time, such software programs can make decisions for individuals, negotiate with other programs, and participate in online markets. Much of e-commerce's economic value arises from this kind of automation, which not only reduces operating costs but adds value by generating new market interactions. This text teaches how to analyze the added value of such applications, considering consumer behavior, pricing strategies, incentives, and other critical factors. It discusses added value in several e-commerce arenas: online shopping, business-to-business e-commerce, application design, online negotiation (one-to-one trading), online auctions (one-to-many trading), and many-to-many electronic exchanges. Combining insights from several years of microeconomic research as well as from game theory and computer science, it stresses the importance of economic engineering in application design as well as the need for business models to take into account the "total game." As the only serious treatment of the microeconomics of e-commerce, this book should be read by anyone seeking e-commerce solutions or planning to work in the field.

Suggested Citation

  • Nir Vulkan, 2003. "Introduction to The Economics of E-Commerce: A Strategic Guide to Understanding and Designing the Online Marketplace," Introductory Chapters, in: The Economics of E-Commerce: A Strategic Guide to Understanding and Designing the Online Marketplace, Princeton University Press.
    • Handle: RePEc:pup:chapts:7523-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7523.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7523.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shihyu Chou & Chin-Shien Lin & Chi-hong Chen & Tai-Ru Ho & Yu-Chen Hsieh, 2007. "A Simulation-Based Model for Final Price Prediction in Online Auctions," Journal of Economics and Management, College of Business, Feng Chia University, Taiwan, vol. 3(1), pages 1-16, January.
    2. Kugler, Tamar & Neeman, Zvika & Vulkan, Nir, 2006. "Markets versus negotiations: An experimental investigation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 121-134, July.
    3. Montealegre, Fernando & Thompson, Sarahelen R. & Eales, James S., 2007. "An Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of Success of Food and Agribusiness E-Commerce Firms," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21.
    4. Mohammed Otaq & Hassan Al-Dhaafri, 2016. "Individual Personality Factors as Drivers for Electronic and Mobile-Shopping Acceptance in United Arab Emirates," Asian Social Science, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(12), pages 1-1, December.
    5. Nittana Sukasame & Terrence Clifford Sebora & Antonia Mohedano-Suanes, 2007. "E-commerce entrepreneurship as a national priority: the case of Thailand," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(7), pages 989-1001, November.
    6. Øystein Foros, 2007. "Price Strategies and Compatibility in Digital Networks," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 85-97.
    7. John Aloysius & Cary Deck & Amy Farmer, 2013. "Sequential Pricing of Multiple Products: Leveraging Revealed Preferences of Retail Customers Online and with Auto-ID Technologies," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 372-393, June.
    8. Vulkan, Nir & Shem-Tov, Yotam, 2015. "A note on fairness and personalised pricing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 179-183.
    9. Clasen, Michael, 2004. "Success Factors of Digital Markets in the Agricultural and Food Industry," 2004 Conference (48th), February 11-13, 2004, Melbourne, Australia 58394, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    business models; profits; investment; technology; online markets; automation; application design; negotiation; engineering; exchange;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pup:chapts:7523-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://press.princeton.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.