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More and more disputes have quickly emerged and accumulated, hence generating uncertainties and doubts among consumers regarding the online group-buying. In order to decrease such uncertainties, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among information disclosure, trust, reducing search cost, and online group-buying intention, as well as proposing concrete suggestions for enhancing online group-buying intention.

In order to explore the relationships among information disclosure, trust, reducing search cost, and online group-buying intention, the questionnaire and statistical analytical techniques were used. Moreover, as this study was an early attempt to develop a model for information disclosure, trust, reducing search cost, and online group-buying intention, partial least square therefore was appropriately to analyze data.

The results showed that the level of information disclosure and trust on a group-buying website have positive influence on reducing search costs, while reducing search costs and trust have positive influences on online group-buying intention.

This research applied a purposive sampling method and obtained a slightly inadequate number of respondents. Therefore, it is suggested that future research should apply a random sampling method to collect more responses and increase the generalizability of the findings.

By more actively disclosing information it is possible for group-buying websites to increase consumer trust and decrease search costs, thus enhancing their group-buying intentions.

There are few studies on the relationships among reducing search cost, trust, and group-buying intention from the perspective of information disclosure. This study thus applies a questionnaire survey method to explore the relationships among them. This study also offers concrete suggestions to enhance group-buying intentions, and provides marketing strategies that can be used by online group-buying websites to raise their sales.

Historically, research shows that out-of-town buyers of real estate are informationally disadvantaged and therefore pay higher prices compared to in-town buyers. However, with the recent advent of online housing platforms, a plethora of information about the housing market is provided for free. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether out-of-town buyers do in fact pay a premium and why, and whether this premium has decreased because of better information availability.

A hedonic regression model over a ten-year window (2005, 2015) is developed to analyze condominium transactions in Miami-Dade County. The results are validated by various robustness checks and the propensity score matching algorithm to identify a comparable control sample for 2015 in terms of relevant housing characteristics.

The results support the hypothesis that out-of-town buyers pay higher prices for real estate, compared to their local counterparts, and that both search costs and anchoring cause a premium in both years, whereas wealth only plays a significant role in 2005. The premium because of search costs, and therefore, information availability has decreased slightly over time.

This is the first out-of-town paper that compares two points in time versus a single cross-section analysis. Besides the premium caused by information asymmetry/search costs measured by distance and the anchoring effect, the regression model is extended by the wealth effect.

Empirically examines how certain variables influence the extent of external information search for banking services. The effects of perceived benefit, perceived cost, perceived risk, and perceived knowledge are tested within a proposed structural equation, cost‐benefit based Banking Services Model (BSM). Surveys a sample of 661 students at a major US university to gather data on their information search for banking services. The results reveal that the BSM provides a good fit to the data. Perceived benefit, cost and knowledge influence the extent of prepurchase bank information search. In addition, the consumers felt that it was more beneficial to obtain more information when there was a perceived benefit of lowering risk and when they already had some form of prior product knowledge. Implications of the BSM for services marketing management and consumer theory, limitations of the study, and future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of three price-matching guarantee (PMG) variables, including refund depth, refund period and competitive scope, on consumer response; the moderating role of consumer search costs is also examined.

This study uses a scenario simulation method with a 2×2×2 factorial design to test the research model and hypotheses.

The results indicate that refund depth has a significant effect on price perception and purchase intention, while competitive scope has a significant effect on purchase intention. In addition, the effects of both refund depth and competitive scope on price perception are moderated by consumer search costs.

This study is a pioneering effort to explore the effects of PMGs variables on consumer response in the context of online retailing. These findings provide several important theoretical and practical implications for the PMG strategy of online retailing.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of transactional costs on smallholder avocado farmers’ participation in the export market and the extent of participation in Murang’a County, Kenya.

Data was collected from 384 avocado farmers in Murang’a County, following stratified sampling. The Heckman two-stage model was used for analysis.

Results showed that the cost of information search was an important variable that impedes smallholders’ participation in export marketing while harvesting costs inhibits the extent of participation in export marketing.

This study used data at the farm level. Therefore, insights on transaction costs among other marketing agents in the export market value chain would be an issue for future studies.

Following the debate on transaction costs and market participation among farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa, this paper models transactional costs and export market participation among avocado smallholders and measures the extent of participation with the inclusion of harvesting costs, negotiation costs, monitoring costs and information search costs that are not common in previous studies, thus contributing to the development of literature.

Investigates empirically the importance of buyer characteristics as well as product and service classifications on the informational content of advertising supply by sellers utilizing Yellow Pages advertisements from six US cities. The analysis and tests extend the categories used in previous tests by including so‐called “credence goods” by analysing the impact of alternative buyer characteristics as proxies for time and information costs. The intra‐city and, to a lesser extent, inter‐city comparisons lend support to the contemporary theory of advertising as information.

In this paper, we define a tractable procedure to measure worker incomplete information in the labor market. The procedure, which makes use of earnings distribution skewness, is based on econometric frontier estimation techniques, and is consistent with search theory. We apply the technique to 11 countries over various years, and find that incomplete information leads workers to receive on average about 30–35% less pay than they otherwise would have earned, had they information on what each firm paid. Generally, married men and women suffer less from incomplete information than the widowed or divorced; and singles suffer the most. Women suffer more from incomplete information than men. Schooling and labor market experience reduce these losses, but institutions within a country can reduce them, as well. For example, we find that workers in countries that strongly support unemployment insurance (UI) receive wages closer to their potential, so doubling UI decreases incomplete information and results in 5% higher wages. A more dense population reduces search costs leading to less incomplete information. A more industrial economy disseminates wage information better, so workers exhibit less incomplete information and higher wages. Finally, we find that foreign worker inflows increase incomplete information, and at the same time reduce average wage levels, at least in the short run.

Developments in electronic technology are changing the way business is normally done. This paper investigates how Internet technology reshapes consumer behavior, specifically in online information search. While information search has been a major research stream in the consumer behavior literature, online search for product/service information is a relatively new area. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for studying the determinants of online information search. Since information search online is a precursor to online purchase, an in‐depth understanding of how consumers gather information online is critical to Internet business success.

Recent interest in the Internet as a medium for commerce has raised questions about the usefulness of branding on the World Wide Web. Examines whether consumers use brands as sources of information when shopping on the Internet. Applying theory from the economics of information, predicts that recent adopters of the Internet will be less proficient at searching for product information and will rely more on brands. As they gather more experience on the Internet, their search proficiency should rise and their brand reliance should fall. These hypotheses are tested and confirmed using usage and opinion survey data from the Internet community. The results suggest that branding can facilitate consumers’ acceptance of electronic commerce.