Pricr Cometition In Online Businrss To Consumer Market: Model And Empirical Study

It is generally accepted that in the research area of online economics, the efficiency of e-commerce is higher that traditional off-line commerce which result in the hypothesis that e-commerce will lead to friction-free commerce. According to this hypothesis, it can be deduced that the price level and the degree of price dispersion are lower for online retailers than traditional offline retailers as well as many other deductions that can be tested. Hence, it is a focus point of e-commerce research to test this hypothesis from the perspective of price.Recent years, more and more traditional retailers participate in the B2C e-commerce market. The Multi-Channel Retailers (MCRs) who engage in both online and offline channels compete directly with the pure online retailers (Dotcoms) who only develop online business. Focus on this phenomenon, this paper investigates on price competition between these two kinds of retailers in the area of e-commerce market. First, it adopts the method called game model analysis to construct a market competition model of MCRs and Dotcoms, gives out two kinds of retailers' four types of market structure exist in the online market. By using this model, it can be deduced that there are four parameters (including two market layer parameters-the size of the e-commerce market and percentage of e-commerce infiltration together with two retailer enterprise layer parameters-the cost of the e-commerce enterprises and other coefficients excludes price that the consumers apperceive when doing shopping) that influence the price level relationship of two types of retailers. Meanwhile, when compare the prices of two kinds retailers, as the relationship between the parameters is different, it brings on different results.On the basis of holding the Chinese B2C e-commerce market's structural characteristic sufficiently, we choose DC, DV (as the representation of physical product) and online room reserving (as the representation of service product) respectively, refer to normative data collect method, do statistic analysis (including parameter and non-parameter analysis) and mode analysis (including econometric model and ANOVA model) on almost ten thousand B2C market price data. It shows that: the price compare between the two kinds of retailers is adversely with the reduction of the friction-free commerce hypothesis, Dotcoms' prices are higher that MCRs', Dotcoms does not give out reflection about high efficiency; the price dispersion compare between the two kinds of retailers give support to friction-free commerce hypothesis, Dotcoms' internal price dispersion is lower that MCRs'.In addition, there is further study about the value of the product influences on the e-commerce market price dispersion. Depend on analysis of thousand price data collected from MP3 market, we conclude that high value products' price dispersion is narrower than low value products' which is consistent with the deduction from friction-free commerce hypothesis.Combine the analysis of DC,DV market and online room reserving, we can find that the empirical data on price dispersion degree give strong support to friction-free commerce hypothesis. However, the results about price level almost reject the friction-free commerce hypothesis. On this perspective, it can be considered that the efficiency raise comes from e-commerce mainly reflect on that decrease of retailers' price dispersion. As for the price level, it doesn't decline according to people's expectation and there maybe exist other factors that influence itFor further discussing on the empirical analysis results of price competition, based on the conclusions derived from theoretical model, from the angle of consumers' cognition about online retailers, this paper analyzes the possible differences among the online retailers' websites concentrated on the content and the web pages' visual appearance. Generally speaking, the more contents including information and service that websites supply and the more attractive the web pages' visual appearance are, the websites will potentially arrest more website viewer, besides, stimulate them make decision (website viewer turns to online consumer). At last, this paper constructs a evaluate index system in order to distinguish the content differences of e-commerce websites. Sequentially, designs an electric-physiological experiment focus on the cogitation effect of web pages' visual appearance. The results derived from the sample websites' experiment reveal that there is no significant difference between the two types of retailers' websites relate to the web pages' visual appearance.