Consumers in the Internet era: Essays on the impact of electronic commerce from a consumer perspective

This dissertation investigates the changes that the Internet and the introduction of electronic commerce brought from a consumer perspective. The dissertation is composed of three essays, addressing the impacts of electronic commerce on (1) consumer information search in the pre-purchase stage, (2) consumer bargaining during the purchase stage and (3) customer relationship management in the post-purchase stage.; The first essay, ‘Evaluating the impact of the Internet on consumers' information search’, investigates the role of the Internet in consumers' information search behavior. The results provide empirical evidence of consumers' extent of usage of information sources on the Internet, and allow assessment of the perceived importance of online information sources across different product types, namely experience and search goods. The study extends the cost-benefit analysis framework of information economics and identifies factors related to the extent of usage of the Internet to search for information.; The second essay, ‘Internet and consumers: Countervailing power revisited’ illustrates that the Internet is a tool with the potential to enable consumers to effectively participate in collective bargaining in the marketplace. Some theoretical perspectives on how on-line consumer networks have the potential to be a new source of countervailing power are introduced, together with a case study that illustrates the viability of the perspectives.; The third essay, ‘An exploratory study of effective Customer Relationship Management in the Internet era’ addresses the issue of online CRM that is beneficial from a consumer perspective. After defining CRM in the Internet era, the essay investigates the importance of various features and dimensions of CRM from the consumer perspective as contrasted with those of researchers and practitioners. An application of findings to the e-grocery industry is presented.; The findings of the three essays in this dissertation confirm the potential of the Internet as a beneficial tool for consumers and provided empirical evidences of the potential being manifested. At the same time, these studies suggest that consumers could play a more active role in the process. The possibility of an era of ‘e-consumerism’ is raised in the concluding section.