Consumer Preferences and Choice between Fixed and Non-Fixed Price Electronic Shopping Channels

The central premise of this paper is that information search on the Internet is increasingly difficult, and price comparisons are next to impossible in many cases. Consumer decision making is a complex process with a great array of influencing factors, price being one of them. We look into the consumer decision making process and identify the factors affecting consumers’ shopping behavior and choices on the Internet. Based on existing literature on consumer behavior, these factors are grouped into personal characteristics, task and context characteristics and social context. We also look into the existing business models on the Internet. We offer a framework, based on consumer behavior literature, which provides some guidelines for building business models with regard of selecting appropriate pricing-model depending on the position of business in its role in the chain of distribution. While our model may lack in detail, we feel that it provides a viable approach to both study and construction of business models for electronic commerce.