Price Dispersion and Fluctuations -Evidence from an Online Consumer Electronics Market-

• Mizuno Takayuki

• Watanabe Tsutomu

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

• オンライン市場における価格変動の統計的分析
• オンライン シジョウ ニ オケル カカク ヘンドウ ノ トウケイテキ ブンセキ

Abstract

This paper investigates e-retailers' price setting and customers' purchasing behaviors using a unique dataset collected by a Japanese price comparison site, which contains tick-by-tick prices quoted by each e-retailer as well as clicks made by each customer, both with second timestamp. First, we find that the probability of being clicked decreases with the price ranking of an e-retailer, but it never goes all the way to zero even for e-retailers with low rankings. Specifically, we find that there exists a linear relationship between the log of the click probability for an e-retailer and its price ranking, suggesting that each customer chooses a set of e-retailers based on non-price characteristics of e-retailers, and then looks for one with the lowest price among them. Second, we find that the average of prices quoted by e-retailers basically follows a random walk with drift, which is a simple reflection of the random walk property of the product inventory held by e-retailers. However, we also find that the average price sometimes deviates from a random walk, e.g. when each e-retailer starts to cut its price in response to price reductions made by others.

Journal

• 経済研究

  経済研究 59 (4), 317-329, 2008-10-25

  岩波書店

Details

• CRID: 1390009224868134016
• NII Article ID: 120004008892
• NII Book ID: AN00070761
• DOI: 10.15057/21231
• HANDLE: 10086/19605
• NDL BIB ID: 9692579
• ISSN: 00229733
• Web Site: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R000000004-I9692579
• Text Lang: ja
• Data Source:
  • JaLC
  • IRDB
  • NDL
  • CiNii Articles
  • KAKEN
• Abstract License Flag: Disallowed