Competition in internet retail markets: The impact of links on web site traffic

Long Range Planning

Volumn 38, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 359-372

  Ennew, Christine ^a   Lockett, Andy ^a   Blackman, Ian ^c   Holland, Christopher P ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^c University of Manchester ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPETITION; ELECTRONIC COMMERCE; INTERNET; RETAIL STORES; TELECOMMUNICATION LINKS; TELECOMMUNICATION TRAFFIC; WEBSITES;

INTERNET RETAIL MARKETS; OFFLINE RETAILERS; WEB BASED BUSINESS;

MARKETING;

COMPETITION (ECONOMICS); INTERNET; RETAILING;

EID: 23844453028     PISSN: 00246301     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.lrp.2005.04.009     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. S. Dutta S. Kwan and A. Segev Business Transformation in Electronic Commerce: A Study of Sectoral and Regional Trends European Management Journal 16 5 1998 540-551
2. Notable exceptions include E. Brynjolfsson and D. Smith Frictionless Commerce? A Comparison of Internet and Conventional retailers Management Science 46 4 2000 563-585
3. and D. Smith and E. Brynjolfsson Consumer Decision-Making at an Internet Shopbot: Brand Still Matters The Journal of Industrial Economics 49 4 2001 541-558
4. For the case of Charles Schwab, see S. Dewan and H. Mendelson, Schwab.com working paper, School of Business, University of Washington at Seattle and Graduate School of Business, Stanford University (1999).
5. For the case of Amazon see Amazon.com: The Wild World of E-Commerce, Business Week, cover story (14 December 1998).
6. T.W. Malone R.I. Benjamin and J. Yates Electronic Markets and Electronic Hierarchies Communications of the ACM 30 6 1987 484-497
7. See for example S. Helm and J. Schlei, Referral Potential - Potential Referrals. An Investigation into Customers Communication in Service Markets, Track 1 Market Relationships, Proceedings 27th EMAC Conference, Marketing Research and Practice, 41-56 (1998)
8. and C. Gallouj Asymmetry of information and the service relationship: selection and evaluation of the service provider International Journal of Service Industry Management 8 1 1997 42-64
9. The development of links is one form of WOM. Other, more involved methods may operate in relation to the direct interaction of customers - and firms - over the Internet. The development of these communities of interest on the Internet has been demonstrated to play an important role in some markets in terms of driving innovation. For a discussion of these issues, see M. Kodama Transforming an Old Economy Company Through Strategic Communities Long Range Planning 35 4 2002 349-365
10. Interestingly, WOM over the Internet has created additional opportunities for companies in terms of their potential geographic reach. For a discussion of these issues, see for example A. Morrison C. Bouquet and J. Beck Netchising: The Next Global Wave? Long Range Planning 37 1 2004 11-27
11. D.L. Hoffman T.P. Novak and M.A. Peralta Building Consumer Trust Online Communications of the ACM 42 4 1999 80-85
12. R.D. Buzzell and B.T. Gale The PIMS Principles 1987 The Free Press New York
13. K. Clay R. Krishnan and E. Wolff Prices and price dispersion on the web: Evidence from the online book industry Journal of Industrial Economics XLIX 4 2001 521-539 find that pricing indicates that many small US book retailers may not be actively competing in the internet market.
14. When a subset of the full dataset was analysed with time since launch as an explanatory variable in the regression models, its effect was found to be insignificant across all sectors (Correlation = -0.117, p = 0.081).
15. The possible presence of heteroskedasticity was indicated in a plot of standardized residuals against predicted values for the dependent variable. Both linear and log-linear forms were estimated and there proved to be little substantial difference in the overall findings. Given that the logarithmic form allows coefficients to be interpreted as elasticities, these results are the ones reported.
16. These patterns are significant in the sense that when the models reported in Table 3 are estimated with data ordered by size, the Durbin-Watson statistic points to the presence of positive serial correlation as Table 2 shows.
17. For an empirical investigation into the drivers of customer retention for B2C firms on the Internet, see B.W. Wirtz and N. Lihotzky Customer Retention Management in the B2C Electronic Business Long Range Planning 36 6 2003 517-532
18. For a detailed discussion of linking strategies and the effects of inertia, see A. Lockett and I.D. Blackman Strategies for Building a Customer Base on the Web: Symbiotic Marketing Journal of Strategic Marketing 9 2001 47-68
19. D.L. Hoffman and T.P. Novak How to acquire Customers on the Web Harvard Business Review 78 3 2000 179-185
20. M. Thelwall Commercial Web Site Links Internet Research 11 2 2001 114-124
21. D.L. Hoffman and T.P. Novak (2000) op cit at Ref 16.