Why do firms compete on price comparison websites? The impact on productivity, profits, and wages
2022 (English)In: International Review of Retail Distribution & Consumer Research, ISSN 0959-3969, E-ISSN 1466-4402, Vol. 34, no 1, p. 1-13Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Sustainable development
SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth
Abstract [en]
A substantial literature indicates that competition on price comparison websites is fierce, leading to lower prices for products sold. As such, we want to answer the key research question: Why do firms compete on price comparison websites? Based on theory, we suggest that participation in these marketplaces leads to increased productivity, i.e., output increases when holding constant the level of inputs used. This, in turn, leads to increased profits, motivating firms to enter price comparison websites despite fierce competition. To find out if theory holds, we empirically investigate how firm entry into a price comparison website affects firm productivity, profits, and wages. Empirically investigating the impact of PriceSpy market participation on productivity, profits, and wages is not easy since firms are free to select whether and when to enter or exit the PriceSpy marketplace, and we use a two-step procedure to address this problem. In the first step, we control for differences in observables between entering firms and potential control-group firms. Then, in a second step, we use a within-firm difference-in-difference estimator on the matched data to investigate how entry into the PriceSpy marketplace affects output while holding inputs constant. Our results indicate that for the full sample of firms, PriceSpy participation increases output by almost 12% when holding the level of inputs constant. Also, an investigation of who gains from the increased productivity shows that, for entering firms, operating profits increase by 9% and gross wages by 14% when studying the full sample of firms. That labor gains more from PriceSpy participation is even clearer when studying the impact on wholesale and retail firms separately. For those firms, wages increased by 16–17% after entry, while no statistically significant impact was found regarding operating profits.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. Vol. 34, no 1, p. 1-13
Keywords [en]
Online retailing, e-commerce, price comparison websites, productivity, value added
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-41346DOI: 10.1080/09593969.2022.2070773ISI: 000789262300001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85129156685OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-41346DiVA, id: diva2:1655460
2022-05-022022-05-022024-06-14Bibliographically approved