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Linking e‐service quality and markups: The role of imperfect information in the supply chain
Author(s) -
Rabinovich Elliot
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of operations management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.649
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1873-1317
pISSN - 0272-6963
DOI - 10.1016/j.jom.2005.11.013
Subject(s) - business , marketing , the internet , supply chain , quality (philosophy) , service (business) , markup language , industrial organization , service quality , supply chain management , computer science , philosophy , epistemology , world wide web , xml , operating system
Consumers’ access to the Internet has greatly expanded their ability to compare offers across a wide array of retailers. In some particular industries (i.e., music), the Internet has also provided consumers with unprecedented opportunities to consider retail offers involving physical goods (i.e., CDs) alongside specialized services. As shown in this paper, these circumstances have important implications for the design and management of customer relationships. These circumstances also permeate relationships across retail and wholesale echelons in music supply chains. In particular, an empirical analysis shows that online consumer access to information on CD retail markups compels retailers to market a level of service quality that is consistent with that markup information. However, limitations in consumer access to markup data, available only to wholesalers and to Internet retailers, allow retailers to inversely link their markups to the fulfillment service quality offered to consumers with wholesaler support.