Numbers of bricks and clicks: Price competition between online and offline stores

The development of internet technology has reshaped the market structure for many products. We study the price competition problem between online stores and offline stores, by allowing consumers’ preferences to be more favorable towards online shopping. We consider 3 scenarios: (1) market with one online store; (2) market with multiple online stores; (3) market with no online store. For each scenario, we characterize equilibrium and conduct comparative statics analysis. Our results show that the market environment parameters may have different effect on important equilibrium variables, and the direction of such effect depends on consumers’ relative preference between online shopping and offline shopping. Furthermore, we provide a complete characterization regarding the welfare comparisons among all possible market structures, showing that the optimal structure from the perspective of consumers or the social planner depends on consumers’ relative preferences between the two channels, while the optimal structure in terms of producers’ surplus maximization is the one with no online store. By revisiting the competition between “Bricks” and “Clicks”, we contribute to the literature with new insights on both the comparative statics of equilibrium variables with respect to market environment parameters and the welfare consequences of market competition under different structures.