Pricing dynamics in the online consumer electronic market

This paper investigates prices of consumer electronics sold on the Web by both online-only retailers (Dotcoms) and the online branches of multi-channel retailers (MCRs). Surprisingly, we find that Dotcoms charge higher price than MCRs, a conclusion contradictory to the results of most of empirical studies. We also find that the electronics prices decreased over the period of study in general, dropping about 0.6 % per week, and the prices of MCRs and Dotcoms went down with time at a similar speed. Further, the prices across MCRs are 35.3 % more dispersed than the prices across the Dotcoms based on full prices, and 33.1 % more dispersed based on percentage prices. However, our results show that price dispersion moved up with time in general, with no significant difference in the speeds between MCRs and Dotcoms. (Online retailing; pricing; electronics market; online-only retailers; multi-channel retailers; price dispersion