The authors examine the implications of electronic shopping for consumers, retailers, and manufacturers. They assume that near-term technological developments will offer consumers unparalleled opportunities to locate and compare product offerings. They examine these advantages as a function of typical consumer goals and the types of products and services being sought and offer conclusions regarding consumer incentives and disincentives to purchase through interactive home shopping vis-à-vis traditional retail formats. The authors discuss implications for industry structure as they pertain to competition among retailers, competition among manufacturers, and retailer-manufacturer relationships.

Interactive home shopping: Consumer, retailer, and manufacturer incentives to participate in

To date, many important threads of information privacy research have developed, but these threads have not been woven together into a cohesive fabric. This paper provides an interdisciplinary review of privacy-related research in order to enable a more cohesive treatment. With a sample of 320 privacy articles and 128 books and book sections, we classify previous literature in two ways: (1) using an ethics-based nomenclature of normative, purely descriptive, and empirically descriptive, and (2) based on their level of analysis: individual, group, organizational, and societal.

Based upon our analyses via these two classification approaches, we identify three major areas in which previous research contributions reside: the conceptualization of information privacy, the relationship between information privacy and other constructs, and the contextual nature of these relationships.

As we consider these major areas, we draw three overarching conclusions. First, there are many theoretical developments in the body of normative and purely descriptive studies that have not been addressed in empirical research on privacy. Rigorous studies that either trace processes associated with, or test implied assertions from, these value-laden arguments could add great value. Second, some of the levels of analysis have received less attention in certain contexts than have others in the research to date. Future empirical studies-both positivist and interpretive--could profitably be targeted to these under-researched levels of analysis. Third, positivist empirical studies will add the greatest value if they focus on antecedents to privacy concerns and on actual outcomes. In that light, we recommend that researchers be alert to an overarching macro model that we term APCO (Antecedents → Privacy Concerns → Outcomes).

/pdf/information-privacy-research-an-interdisciplinary-review-3ozmykcimw.pdf

Information privacy research: an interdisciplinary review

Information privacy refers to the desire of individuals to control or have some influence over data about themselves. Advances in information technology have raised concerns about information privacy and its impacts, and have motivated Information Systems researchers to explore information privacy issues, including technical solutions to address these concerns. In this paper, we inform researchers about the current state of information privacy research in IS through a critical analysis of the IS literature that considers information privacy as a key construct. The review of the literature reveals that information privacy is a multilevel concept, but rarely studied as such. We also find that information privacy research has been heavily reliant on studentbased and USA-centric samples, which results in findings of limited generalizability. Information privacy research focuses on explaining and predicting theoretical contributions, with few studies in journal articles focusing on design and action contributions. We recommend that future research should consider different levels of analysis as well as multilevel effects of information privacy. We illustrate this with a multilevel framework for information privacy concerns. We call for research on information privacy to use a broader diversity of sampling populations, and for more design and action information privacy research to be published in journal articles that can result in IT artifacts for protection or control of information privacy.

http://ftp.misq.org/skin/frontend/default/misq/pdf/appendices/2011/BelangerCrosslerAppendices.pdf

Privacy in the digital age: a review of information privacy research in information systems

Traditional theory suggests consumers should be able to manage their privacy. Yet, empirical and theoretical research suggests that consumers often lack enough information to make privacy-sensitive decisions and, even with sufficient information, are likely to trade off long-term privacy for short-term benefits

/pdf/privacy-and-rationality-in-individual-decision-making-rotzuojkpe.pdf

Privacy and rationality in individual decision making

Firms today use information about customers to improve service and design personalized offerings. To do this successfully, however, firms must collect consumer information. This study enhances awareness about a central paradox for firms investing in personalization; namely, that consumers who value information transparency are also less likely to participate in personalization. We examine the relationship between information technology features, specifically information transparency features, and consumer willingness to share information for online personalization. Based on a survey of over 400 online consumers, we examine the question of whether customer perceived information transparency is associated with consumer willingness to be profiled online. Our results indicate that customers who desire greater information transparency are less willing to be profiled. This result poses a dilemma for firms, as the consumers that value information transparency features most are also the consumers who are less willing to be profiled online. In order to manage this dilemma, we suggest that firms adopt a strategy of providing features that address the needs of consumers who are more willing to partake in personalization, therefore accepting that the privacy sensitive minority of consumers are unwilling to participate in personalization, despite additional privacy features.

The personalization privacy paradox: an empirical evaluation of information transparency and the willingness to be profiled online for personalization

Personalization refers to the tailoring of products and purchase experience to the tastes of individual consumers based upon their personal and preference information. Recent advances in information acquisition and processing technologies have allowed online vendors to offer varieties of web-based personalization that not only increases switching costs, but also serves as important means of acquiring valuable customer information. However, investments in online personalization may be severely undermined if consumers do not use these services due to privacy concerns. In the absence of any empirical evidence that seeks to understand this consumer dilemma, our research develops a parsimonious model to predict consumers' usage of online personalization as a result of the tradeoff between their value for personalization and concern for privacy. In addition to this tradeoff, we find that a consumer's intent to use personalization services is positively influenced by her trust in the vendor. Our findings suggest that: 1. online vendors can improve their abilities to acquire and use customer information through trust building activities; 2. it is of critical importance that vendors understand and evaluate the different values consumers may place in enjoying various types of personalization.

Personalization versus Privacy: An Empirical Examination of the Online Consumer's Dilemma

A large body of research in economics, information systems, and marketing has sought to understand sources of price dispersion. Previous empirical work has mainly offered consumer-and/or product-based explanations for this phenomenon. In contrast, our research explores the key role played by vendors' price-format adoption in explaining price dispersion. We empirically analyze over a half-million online and offline prices offered by major U.S. airlines in the top 500 domestic markets. Our study shows that a vendor's price format remains an important source of price dispersion in both channels even after accounting for other factors known to impact dispersion in airline ticket prices. Importantly, this finding is true for both transacted and posted tickets. We document several other interesting empirical findings. First, the lower variance in the prices of “everyday low price” (EDLP) firms serves to reduce the market-level dispersion in prices when such firms are present. Moreover, the price variance of non-EDLP firms in these markets is also lower than in those markets in which EDLP competitors are absent. Second, we also find that dispersion in offered prices increases closer to the departure date, which is consistent with theoretical assertion that price dispersion increases with reservation prices. Finally, we continue to observe dispersion of online prices even after accounting for vendor strategy and other known sources of dispersion, suggesting that the prices are unlikely to converge even in the presence of sophisticated online search mechanisms.

/pdf/price-formats-as-a-source-of-price-dispersion-a-study-of-rivjn6xi48.pdf

Price Formats as a Source of Price Dispersion: A Study of Online and Offline Prices in the Domestic U.S. Airline Markets

A large body of research in economics, information systems and marketing has sought to understand sources of price dispersion. Previous empirical work has mainly offered consumer and/or product based explanations for this phenomenon. In contrast, our research explores the key role played by vendors’ price-format adoption in explaining price dispersion. We empirically analyze half-million online and offline prices offered by major U.S. airlines in the top 500 domestic markets. Our study shows that a vendor’s price-format remains an important source of price dispersion in both channels even after accounting for other factors known to impact dispersion in airline ticket prices. Importantly, this finding is true for both transacted and posted tickets. We document several other interesting empirical findings. First, the lower variance in the prices of EDLP firms serves to reduce the market-level dispersion in prices when such firms are present. Moreover, the price variance of non-EDLP firms in these markets is also lower than in those markets in which EDLP competitors are absent. Second, we also find that dispersion in offered prices increases closer to the departure date, which is consistent with theoretical assertion that price dispersion increases with reservation prices. Finally, we continue to observe dispersion of online prices even after accounting for vendor strategy and other known sources of dispersion, suggesting that the prices are unlikely to converge even in the presence of sophisticated online search mechanisms.

Price-formats as Sources of Price Dispersion: A Study of Online and Offline Prices in the Domestic US Airline Markets

Extended Abstract Multimarket contact (MMC) is a unique form of competition where the same set of firms face each other in more than one market resulting in a focal-market strategy that needs to account for competition in other markets Extant research in this area suggests that rational firms will not undercut multimarket competitors in a given market as they will foresee a response from their competitors in other markets leading to a form of tacit collusion and higher prices Such behavior is purportedly observed in a number of industry contexts including the US domestic airline sector Our research presents a significant departure from this understanding of multimarket competition and suggests that extant work has ignored firm-specific differences in their basis for rationality when formulating best-response under MMC In the airline sector there are two distinct rationales for pricing, an Everyday Low Price (EDLP) strategy and a promotional (PROMO or HILO) strategy While the latter often varies prices to attract customers through deals and promotions, an EDLP strategy is focused on signaling consistency and average low prices A majority of US carriers engage in promotional pricing while Southwest and JetBlue practice EDLP In a first study using both posted and transacted airline prices, we examine the impact of asymmetric pricing strategies on the understanding of multimarket contact

Raymond G. Sin

Papers

Personalization versus Privacy: An Empirical Examination of the Online Consumer's Dilemma

Price Formats as a Source of Price Dispersion: A Study of Online and Offline Prices in the Domestic U.S. Airline Markets

Price-formats as Sources of Price Dispersion: A Study of Online and Offline Prices in the Domestic US Airline Markets

Personalization versus Privacy: An Empirical Examination of the Online Consumer's Dilemma

An EmpiricalAn Empirical Investigation of Multimarket Contact and Asymmetric Pricing Strategies in the U.S. Domestic Airline Industry