SIS Seminars

This research is composed of three essays for theory development and empirical research on the price rigidity, price points, and price adjustment patterns in e-commerce. The first essay explores daily patterns of Internet pricing for the two major online bookstores, Amazon and BN at a micro-level analysis, informing our understanding of "how rigid prices are on the Internet." The second essay proposes and evaluates an Internet-based price rigidity model to predict what variables and drivers can explain the observed empirical regularities and variations in price adjustment patterns of Internet-based retailers. Finally, the third essay investigates the practical importance of price points on the Internet and provides a rational choice explanation, based on the "rational inattention theory." I also provide additional commentary on a new empirical research approach called the massive quasi-experimental (MQE) data mining method, which employs time-series data to examine price adjustment patterns and price rigidity on the Internet. Taken together, this research draws upon new theoretical perspectives that are largely new to the field of information systems, but that offer rich opportunities for theory building and empirical research in settings that will be of high interdisciplinary interest. I believe that such interdisciplinary studies have the potential to provide a distinctive foundation for IS research and can also serve as a guide to research on other economic phenomena in e-commerce.

"Understanding Price Rigidity, Price Points, and Price Adjustment Patterns in Internet-based Selling: A Massive Quasi-Experimental Data Mining Approach"