The Competitiveness of On-Line vis-a-vis Conventional Retailing: A Preliminary Study
<|reference_start|>The Competitiveness of On-Line vis-a-vis Conventional Retailing: A Preliminary Study: Previous research has directly studied whether on-line retailing is more competitive than conventional retail markets. The evidence from books and music CDs is mixed. Here, I use an indirect approach to compare the competitiveness of on-line with conventional markets. Focusing on the retail market for books, I identify a peculiarity in the pricing of bestsellers relative to other titles. Supposing that competitive barriers are lower in on-line retailing, I analyze how the lower barriers would affect the relative pricing of bestsellers. The empirical data indicates that on-line retailing is more competitive than conventional retailing.<|reference_end|>
@article{png2000the,
    title={The Competitiveness of On-Line vis-a-vis Conventional Retailing: A
  Preliminary Study},
    author={Ivan Png},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0007034},
    year={2000},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={cs/0007034},
    primaryClass={cs.OH}
}