PRICE COMPARISON WEBSITES

The large and growing industry of price comparison websites (PCWs) or ‘web aggregators’ is poised to benefit consumers by increasing competitive pricing pressure on firms acquainting shoppers with more prices. However, these sites also charge for sales, which feeds back raise I investigate the impact introducing PCWs a market homogeneous good. find that single PCW increases prices all consumers, both non-shoppers. More generally, in most profitable equilibrium competing PCWs, tend rise number PCWs. (JEL: L11, L86, D43)