Premium
Internet Car Retailing
Author(s) -
Morton Fiona Scott,
Zettelmeyer Florian,
SilvaRisso Jorge
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
the journal of industrial economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.93
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1467-6451
pISSN - 0022-1821
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6451.00160
Subject(s) - business , purchasing , service (business) , advertising , the internet , marketing , computer science , world wide web
We investigate the effect of Internet car referral services on dealer pricing of automobiles in California. Customers of an online service pay on average 2% less for their car ($450 for the average car). 25% of the savings come from purchasing at low‐price dealerships affiliated with the online service. The remaining 75% stem from information provision by the online service, bargaining by the service on behalf of consumers, and cost efficiencies. A consumer receiving the mean online price does better than 65% of offline consumers, conditional on the car being purchased.