Does Position Matter More on Mobile? Ranking Effects across Devices

Achieving a better rank online is often costly. Is the effect of ranking different for mobile devices and traditional PC? This study empirically examines the ranking effect across different device types in an ecommerce environment. With over 4 million observations from Tweaker.net, the largest shopbot in Netherlands, we estimated the ranking effect between mobile and PC. Surprisingly, and contrary to prior findings, our results across different model specifications consistently show that ranking effect is smaller on mobile devices. This study extends the understanding about the effect of position in e-commerce context by empirically examining the ranking effect across devices. This study has important managerial implications for retailers and e-commerce platforms. As the ranking effect is smaller on mobile devices, retailers should take account of the source of traffic (mobile or PC) while bidding for a particular position. And platforms should consider the different ranking effects on different channels.