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Are Online and Offline Prices Similar? Evidence from Large Multi-Channel Retailers
Open accessAbstract
Online prices are increasingly used for measurement and research applications, yet little is known about their relation to prices collected offline, where most retail transactions take place. I conduct the first large-scale comparison of prices simultaneously collected from the websites and physical stores of 56 large multi-channel retailers in 10 countries. I find that price levels are identical about 72 percent of the time. Price changes are not synchronized but have similar frequencies and average sizes. These results have implications for national statistical offices, researchers using online data, and anyone interested in the effect of the Internet on retail prices. (JEL D22, L11, L81, O14)
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“The adherence between online and offline price levels for multichannel retailers has already been proven across multiple countries (Cavallo, 2017(Cavallo, , 2018)).”
From Sanctions and Russian online prices (2024) · cites this paper as Cavallo, 2017
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Metadata
- Authors
- Cavallo, A.
- Affiliations
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Corresponding author
- Cavallo, Alberto
- ORCID
- Cavallo, Alberto
- Venue
- American Economic Review
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2017-01-01
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 283-303
- ISSN
- 0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2335991931
- Cited by
- 336
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 28 · 2025: 42 · 2024: 38 · 2023: 47 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 42 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 15
- FWCI
- 45.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Economic Review (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Supply Chain and Inventory Management
- Keywords
- online prices, price synchronization, multichannel retailing, price measurement, price changes, consumer price statistics
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