Thanks to Web 2.0, retail websites and online communities provide user reviews to help consumers make purchase decisions. Current IS and marketing literature reveal that user reviews can form strong social influence on consumers’ purchase decisions. However, few studies systematically examined how social influence is developed from user reviews. To bridge the gap, our research explores what fac...

In this paper, we examine how software vulnerabilities affect firms that sell software and consumers that purchase software. In particular, we model three decisions of the firm: (I) an upfront investment in the quality of the software to reduce potential vulnerabilities, (II) a policy decision whether to announce vulnerabilities, (III) and a price for the software. We also model two decisions o...

Trust and satisfaction are essential ingredients for successful business relationships in business-toconsumer electronic commerce. Yet there is little research on trust and satisfaction in e-commerce that takes a longitudinal approach. Drawing on three primary bodies of literature, the theory of reasoned action, the extended valence framework, and expectation-confirmation theory, this study syn...

We investigate drivers of consumer purchase decisions when shopping experience goods online, using the context of expertise literature in business topics. Based on 60,000 books from Amazon.de, we test hypotheses on the effects of (1) “brand” characteristics (author’s background, reputation, experience, demographics), (2) product characteristics (publisher, price, page count, reading excerpts, c...

Markdown as a pricing modality is ubiquitous in retail whereas everyday-low-price (EDLP) remains relatively rare (despite its several advantages, such as simplicity). Using a stylized model, we explore whether and why retailers can use either of these pricing modalities as an effective defense against a competitor entering the market with the alternative pricing modality to sell an identical pr...

a r t i c l e i n f o This study analyzes the perceptions which induce customers to purchase over the Internet, testing the moderating effect of e-purchasing experience. We distinguish between two groups: (1) potential e-customers, who are considering making their first e-purchase, and (2) experienced e-customers, who have made at least one e-purchase and are thinking about continuing to do so....

Stimulating people to state a preference for one of two commercial products can increase their willingness to purchase not only one of these products, but also other products in a totally unrelated domain. However, willingness to make a purchase in a given domain (e.g., computers) can also be increased by asking individuals (a) to indicate which of two stimuli in a different domain (e.g., vacat...

The aim of this paper is to empirically explore the perception of a group of United Arab Emirates (UAE) web users towards e-commerce transactions, study their willingness to trade online, and isolate factors that drive these users towards purchase decisions. The study finds that web users largely use functional characteristics to assess the effectiveness of e-commerce websites, and are driven t...

This paper presents a lie-cycle simulation analysis of the interaction among savings decisions, housing purchase decisions, and the tax system in the United States and Japan. To investigate this issue, we first document the stylized fact that the typical Japanese household purchases a house later in the life cycle with a higher down-payment ratio than its U.S. counterpart. Second, a life-cycle ...

Purchase shares of major national-brands in consumer packaged-goods industries vary substantially across stores, both between markets and within markets. This paper measures the extent to which this variation in national-brand purchase shares depends on store-specific supply decisions, which are traditionally within the purview of trade marketing. We first demonstrate the extent to which purcha...