ABSTRACT: This paper aims to predict consumer acceptance of e-commerce by proposing a set of key drivers for engaging consumers in on-line transactions. The primary constructs for capturing consumer acceptance of e-commerce are intention to transact and on-line transaction behavior. Following the theory of reasoned action (TRA) as applied to a technology-driven environment, technology acceptance model (TAM) variables (perceived usefulness and ease of use) are posited as key drivers of e-commerce acceptance. The practical utility of TAM stems from the fact that e-commerce is technology-driven. The proposed model integrates trust and perceived risk, which are incorporated given the implicit uncertainty of the e-commerce environment. The proposed integration of the hypothesized independent variables is justified by placing all the variables under the nomological TRA structure and proposing their interrelationships. The resulting research model is tested using data from two empirical studies. The first, exploratory study comprises three experiential scenarios with 103 students. The second, confirmatory study uses a sample of 155 on-line consumers. Both studies strongly support the e-commerce acceptance model by validating the proposed hypotheses. The paper discusses the implications for e-commerce theory, research, and practice, and makes several suggestions for future research.

The Internet has the potential to significantly reduce search costs by allowing consumers to engage in low-cost price comparisons online. This paper provides empirical evidence that the rise of Internet comparison sites for life insurance has had a major impact on prices in the 1990s. Using micro data on life insurance policies, the results indicate that, controlling for individual and policy characteristics, a 10 percent increase in the share of individuals using the Internet reduced average prices for the group by up to 5 percent. Rising Internet usage does not lower prices for policies types that are not covered by the websites nor does it appear to lower prices in the period before the insurance sites came online. Overall growth of the Internet has reduced term life prices by 8 to 15 percent and increased consumer surplus by at least $115-215 million per year and perhaps as much as $1 billion. The results also show that the introduction of the Internet search sites is associated with an increase in price dispersion within demographic groups but that as the share of people using the technology rises further, dispersion falls.

In this paper, we examine the research and results of dynamic pricing policies and their relation to revenue management. The survey is based on a generic revenue management problem in which a perishable and nonrenewable set of resources satisfy stochastic price-sensitive demand processes over a finite period of time. In this class of problems, the owner (or the seller) of these resources uses them to produce and offer a menu of final products to the end customers. Within this context, we formulate the stochastic control problem of capacity that the seller faces: How to dynamically set the menu and the quantity of products and their corresponding prices to maximize the total revenue over the selling horizon.

We thank Melanie Webber and Craig Ima from Autobytel.com for providing us with purchase referral data and Keiko Powers from J.D. Power and Associates for help with the transaction data. We thank Meghan Busse,

This article reviews the growing body of research on electronic commerce from the perspective of economic analysis. It begins by constructing a new framework for understanding electronic commerce research, then identifies the range of applicable theory and current research in the context of the new conceptual model. It goes on to assess the state-of-the-art of knowledge about electronic commerce phenomena in terms of the levels of analysis here proposed. And finally, it charts the directions along which useful work in this area might be developed. This survey and framework are intended to induce researchers in the field of information systems, the authors’ reference discipline, and other areas in schools of business and management to recognize that research on electronic commerce is business-school research, broadly defined. As such, developments in this research area in the next several years will occur across multiple business-school disciplines, and there will be a growing impetus for greater interdisciplinary communication and interaction.

Millions of dollars change hands daily through online auction markets. However, fraud has been on the rise in these markets. Using a game theoretic approach, we propose a design of an economic incentive mechanism, the trusted third party (TTP), to serve the online auction communities. The proposed model addresses both the economic and technological aspects of online auction transactions by assigning a digital certificate to each participant. Thus, each participant's identity as well as his or her reputation can be established by other market participants. The analytical results demonstrate that when online transactions take place with the assistance of digital certificates issued by a TTP, the most utilitarian course of action for a market participant is to behave honestly. D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Globalization and the ubiquitous nature of the Internet facilitate e-commerce activities across nations. These activities demand a new conceptualization of online consumer behavior that transcends national boundaries and takes into consideration cross-cultural effects. To better understand what drives e-commerce across cultures, we apply a theory of planned behavior (TPB) perspective to capture behavioral intentions to transact online in two dissimilar countries – China and the United States. We argue that adoption of e-commerce depends primarily on consumer behavioral intentions to engage in product purchases. The model first draws upon the TPB to interrelate online transaction intentions with attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. Second, given the uncertainty present in e-commerce, trust in a Web retailer is hypothesized as a salient belief that indirectly influences transaction intentions through attitude and perceived behavioral control. The paper’s major contribution is to incorporate Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions- individualism/collectivism, power distance, and long-term orientation- in studying cross-cultural e-commerce adoption. We argue that these cultural differences influence the proposed e-commerce adoption model and moderate its key relationships. An empirical study was conducted to test the proposed cross-cultural model using data from consumers in China and the United States. The results render support for most of the proposed hypotheses, emphasizing the role of cultural differences on consumer e-commerce adoption. The paper discusses several insights from this exploratory study that contribute to the cross-cultural e-commerce literature. Finally, we discuss the study’s implications for theory and practice, concluding with several suggestions for future research on cultural aspects of e-commerce. 1.

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Compared to offline shopping, the online shopping experience may be viewed as lacking human warmth and sociability as it is more impersonal, anonymous, automated and generally devoid of face-to-face interactions. Thus, understanding how to create customer loyalty in online environments (e-Loyalty) is a complex process. In this paper a model for e-Loyalty is proposed and used to examine how varied conditions of social presence in a B2C e-Services context influence e-Loyalty and its antecedents of perceived usefulness, trust and enjoyment. This model is examined through an empirical study involving 185 subjects using structural equation modeling techniques. Further analysis is conducted to reveal gender differences concerning hedonic elements in the model on e-Loyalty.

The Internet has significantly reduced the marginal cost of producing and distributing digital information goods. It also coincides with the emergence of new competitive strategies such as large-scale bundling. In this paper, we show that bundling can create “economies of aggregation ” for information goods if their marginal costs are very low, even in the absence of network externalities or economies of scale or scope. We extend the Bakos-Brynjolfsson bundling model (1999) to settings with several different types of competition, including both upstream and downstream, as well as competition between a bundler and single good and competition between two bundlers. Our key results are based on the “predictive value of bundling, ” the fact that it is easier for a seller