Macmillan - The Economics of Electronic Commerce

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Economics of Electronic Commerce

(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Soon-yong Choi; Andrew Whinston; Dale Stahl
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Publication Date: 07/22/97
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Contents
About This Book
Trademark Acknowledgments
Credits
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Chapter 1 - Electronic Commerce and the Internet

Chapter 2 - Characteristics of Digital Products and Processes
Chapter 3 - Internet Infrastructure and Pricing
Chapter 4 - Quality Uncertainty and Market Efficiency
Chapter 5 - Economic Aspects of Copyright Protection
Chapter 6 - Signaling Quality and Product Information
Chapter 7 - Consumers' Search for Information
Chapter 8 - Product Choices and Discriminatory Pricing
Chapter 9 - Financial Intermediaries and Electronic Commerce
Chapter 10 - Electronic Payment Systems
Chapter 11 - Business and Policy Implications of Electronic Commerce
Chapter 12 - Future Directions for Economic Research
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Page 7
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Contents
Contents at a Glance
Chapter One
Electronic Commerce and the Internet 1
Chapter Two
Characteristics of Digital Products and Processes 59
Chapter Three
Internet Infrastructure and Pricing 93
Chapter Four
Quality Uncertainty and Market Efficiency 137
Chapter Five
Economic Aspects of Copyright Protection 175
Chapter Six
Signaling Quality and Product Information 213
Chapter Seven
Consumers' Search for Information 263
Chapter Eight
Product Choices and Discriminatory Pricing 313
Chapter Nine
Financial Intermediaries and Electronic Commerce 373
Chapter Ten
Electronic Payment Systems 407
Chapter Eleven
Business and Policy Implications of Electronic Commerce 463
Chapter Twelve
Future Directions for Economic Research 539
Index 583
Page 8
Page 9
Table of Contents
1 Electronic Commerce and the Internet 1
1.1. Developments in Internetworking 2
Distributed and Networked Computing 3
Open Networks 5
Two-way Communications and the Web 9
1.2. Electronic Commerce 12
Electronic Commerce Examples 13
Electronic Commerce as a Communications Network 15
Electronic Commerce of Digital Products 16
Commercial Potential of the Internet 21
1.3. Market Characteristics of Electronic Commerce 22
Current Commercial Uses of the Internet 23
User Characteristics 25
Competition and Market Organization 27
Business Organization and Virtual Firms 30
Legal Environment 32
1.4. Current Issues in Electronic Commerce 35
Contents and Quality 35
Copyrights versus Users Rights 38
Copyright and the Freedom of Speech 39
Legal and Economic Considerations of Copyrights
40
Interactive Advertising and the Use of Consumer Information 41
Push or Pull Advertising 42
Measuring the Impact of Online Advertising 43
Targeted Advertising and Privacy 44
Internet Intermediaries 45
Security and Privacy of Internet Transactions 46
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Pricing Strategies for Digital Products 48
Online Taxation, Regulation, and Other Legal Issues 50
1.5. Summary 51
References 53
Suggested Readings and Notes 54
History of the Internet 54
Firms and Markets 54
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) 55
Internet Resources 55
Implications of Digital Process 55
The Internet Society (ISOC) 56
2 Characteristics of Digital Products and Processes 59
2.1. What Are Digital Products? 60
2.2. Characteristics of Information Products 64
Dependence on Individual Preference 65
Transitory or Cumulative Utility 65
Externalities of Information Products 66
Intrinsic Values of Digital Products 69
2.3. The Physical Nature of Digital Products 69
Indestructibility 70
Transmutability 72
Reproducibility 73
Physical Nature and Economic Issues 74
Product Selection Strategies Based on the Taxonomy 84
Changing Time Dependence 85
Changing Usage Patterns 85
Transfer Mode and Externalities 86
2.4. Summary 87
References 89
Page 11
Value of Information 89
Electronic Markets 90
Network Externalities 90
Java Programming Language 91
Commercial Sites Index 91
Virtual Museums and Florist 91
Medical Sites on the Internet 92
3 Internet Infrastructure and Pricing 93
3.1. Internet Pipelines 93
3.2. Traffic Control on the Internet 96
Packet Switching 96
Internet Protocol Addresses 97
Transmission Control Protocol 100
Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast 100
3.3. The Infrastructure Convergence 103
The Convergence in the Last Mile 104
Long-Haul Traffic 107
3.4. Congestion and Infrastructure Pricing 109
Ideal Economic Pricing Proposals 112
Dynamic Optimal Pricing 114
Static Priority Pricing 117
The Smart-Market Approach 118
Connection-Only and Flat-Rate Pricing 119
Voluntary User Declarations 122
Synopsis 122
3.5. Public Policy and Infrastructure 123
Public Policy for a Publicly Owned Network 124
Public Policy for a Privately Owned Network 125
3.6. Summary 127
References 130
Page 12
Further Readings on Game Theory 133
The Internet Networking Infrastructure 133
Domain Name Registration 134
MBONE (Multicast Backbone) 134
IETF IP Multicasting Proposals 135
Broadband Online Services 135
4 Quality Uncertainty and Market Efficiency 137
4.1. Economics of the Lemons Market 139
Price as a Signal for Quality 141
Remedies for the Lemons Problem 143
4.2. Information Channels in Electronic Commerce 145
Sellers Provide Product Information 145
Freeware, Shareware, and Other Promotions 148
Free Products Online 148
The Economics of Try-Outs 150
Third-Party Information 152
Retailers and Other Brokers 153
4.3. Quality and Intermediaries 155
Transactional Efficiencies 156
Intermediaries as Experts 158
Intermediaries as an Information Source 161
Intermediaries as Producers 162
4.4. Intermediaries and Contracts 163
Subcontracting Systems 164
Incomplete Contracts 166
4.5. Summary 169
References 170
Economics of the Lemons Problem 171
Repeat Purchases and Reputation 172
Page 13
Internet Commerce 173
Internet and Economics 173
5 Economic Aspects of Copyright Protection 175
5.1. Economic History of Copyright 176
The Property Aspect of Copyright 178
The Authorship Aspect of Copyright 183
Public Interest 184
5.2. The Nuts and Bolts of Copyrights 186
Objects Covered by Copyright 186
Terms of Copyright 187
Works That Cannot Be Copyrighted 187
Specific Rights of Authors Granted by Copyright 189
Fair Use Doctrine 190
Other Intellectual Property Laws 191
5.3. Copyright Protection and Digital Products 192
Reproduction 192
Reproductions on the Internet 193
Economic Implications of Reproduction 195
Resale and Distribution 195
Resale and the First Sale Doctrine 196
Resale Prevention and Pricing 198
Content Control 200
5.4. Market Protection Through Business Strategies 202
5.5. Policy Implications 204
Copyright and Antitrust Concerns 205
5.6. Summary 207
References 209
Historical Development of Copyright Laws 210
Patents and Economics 211
Page 14
Articles 211
Internet Copyright Sites 212
Texts of Copyright Laws 212
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
Conference Resources 212
6 Signaling Quality and Product Information 213
6.1. Advertising on the Internet 214
Growth in Electronic Advertising 215
Types of Internet Advertising 217
Banner Ads 218
Selling Advertising to Consumers 220
Web Storefronts 222
6.2. The Economics of Advertising 223
The Economic Roles of Advertising 224
The Informational Content of Advertising 231
Information about Information Products 231
The Effect of Advertising on Price 234
Advertising and Product Differentiation 237
6.3. Other Strategies to Convey Product Information 239
Repeat Purchases and Reputation 239
Reputation Building in Electronic Commerce 240
Renting a Reputation 241
Shareware and Wasted Investments 242
Quality Guarantees for Digital Products 243
6.4. Marketing Strategies for the Internet 244
Myths and Popular Wisdom about Online Advertising 245
Broadcast versus Targeted Advertising 246
Push versus Pull Advertising 249
Advertisements as Commodities 251
Passive versus Active Marketing 252
Electronic Malls and Intermediaries 253
Page 15
Is Online Advertising Effective? 254
Providing Consumer Information 256
6.5. Summary 257
References 258
Advertising and Competition 260
Signaling 260
Web Directory for Advertising 261
Popular Wisdom on Internet Marketing 261
Shareware Resources 262
7 Consumers' Search for Information 263
7.1. Consumer Searches and Economic Efficiency 263
Search Costs 265
Consumer Searches and Electronic Commerce 267
Digital Products and Consumer Searches 269
7.2. The Search Market and Intermediaries 270
Search Market Efficiency 271
Search Efficiency in Intermediaries 276
Search Efficiency in Informational Content 278
7.3. Search Engines on the Internet 280
Search or Surf? 281
Inadequacies of Search Engines 281
7.4. Market Efficiency In Various Information Sources 282
The World Wide Web 283
Web Searches 284
Gopher 285
Gopher Search 285
Anonymous FTP and Telnet 286
FTP Search by Archie 287
UseNet 287
Page 16
Mailing Lists 289
Electronic Messaging 290
E-mail Address Search 292
Consumer Learning and Search 292
7.5. Information Efficiency in Web Search Engines 294
Information Acquisition and Efficiency 298
Advertising versus Consumer Searching 305
7.6. Summary 307
References 309
Consumer Search 309
Search Engines 310
Software Agents and Filtering 311
Robomoderation 311
8 Product Choices and Discriminatory Pricing 313
8.1. Product Differentiation and Pricing in Economics 315
What Is Product Differentiation? 315
Horizontal Differentiation 316
Vertical Differentiation 317
The Incentive to Differentiate 318
Chamberlinian Monopolistic Competition 319
Price Discrimination 320
Variations in Consumption Values: A Simple Case of
Product Matching 323
8.2. Product Customization 325
Sellers' Use of Transmutability 325
Gains and Losses from Customization 328
Consumer Arbitrage 328
Reduced Waste 329
Page 17
8.3. Use of Consumer Information 331
Primary and Secondary Consumer Information 331
Privacy and Anonymity 337
Anonymity as a Myth 337
Legal Efforts to Protect Privacy 340
Market-Based Solution to Protect Personal
Information 341
Consumer Information and Discriminatory Pricing 344
8.4. Pricing Digital Products 347
Cost Curves 348
Standard U-Shaped Average Cost Curve 348
Average Cost Curve of a Digital Product 349
Strategic Factors in Pricing 352
Quality Choices 352
Product Differentiation 355
Incentive Compatible Prices 356
Selling versus Renting Digital Products 359
Subscription and Bundling 361
The Case for Microbundles and Micropayments 365
8.5. Summary 367
References 368
Nonlinear Pricing 369
Product Differentiation 370
Customized Internet Products 371
Privacy on the Internet 371
Cookies 372
Spoofing on the Internet 372
9 Financial Intermediaries and Electronic Commerce 373
9.1. Types of Financial Intermediaries 375
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9.2. Transactional Efficiencies 378
Phases of Transaction 379
Efficiency in Search Process 379
Negotiation and Settlement Processes 381
Financial Intermediaries: Electronic Market Case Studies 382
Internet Initial Public Offerings 383
Digital Exchange Markets 385
9.3. Transformation Functions 388
Maturity Transformation 389
Volume Transformation 389
Electronic Commerce Effects 390
9.4. Information Brokerage 390
Information Uncertainty and Risk 390
Information Trading 391
Certification and Assurance 394
9.5. Summary 399
References 401
Financial Intermediation and Credit Rationing 402
Electronic Banking Resource Center 403
Encryption Technologies 403
Financial Services on the Internet 404
Digital Signature and Certification Services 404
10 Electronic Payment Systems 407
10.1 Electronic Payment Systems: An Overview 407
Payment Patterns 408
Types of Electronic Payment Systems 410
Conventional Payment Process 411
10.2. Payment Clearing Services 417
10.3. Notational Funds Transfer 421
Page 19
10.4. Digital Currency Payment Systems 426
Money as a Medium of Exchange 427
Inside Money and Outside Money 428
Needs for Electronic Currency Payment Systems 430
Anonymity in Transactions 430
Micropayments and the Internet 430
The Transferability of Value 431
10.5. Properties and Specifications of Digital
Currencies 432
Desirable Properties of Digital Currency 432
Monetary Value 432
Convenience 433
Security 433
Authentication 434
Non-Refutability 434
Accessibility and Reliability 434
Anonymity 435
Technical Specifications of Digital Currencies 435
Ecash 436
Millicent 438
Mondex 439
10.6. Evaluation and Policy Issues 440
Information Contents of Transactions 440
Transactional Efficiency 442
Monetary Effects 443
Effects on Market Organization 449
10.7. Digital Currency and Governments 451
Effects on Government Revenues 452
Regulatory Issues 453
Issues in International Commerce 455
10.8. Summary 457
References 459
Page 20
Quantity Theory of Money 460
Monetary Freedom 460
Electronic Payment Systems 461
Electronic Money Resources 462
Standard Electronic Transactions (SET) 462
11 Business and Policy Implications of Electronic Commerce 463
11.1. Internet as the Great Equalizer 464
The Virtual Equality 464
The Reputational Transfer 465
Declining Average Costs and the Advantage of Size 466
Product Differentiation and Size 467
11.2. Search Service and Its Market Implications 468
Advertising in Broadcast Media 469
Search Engines and Advertising 471
Digital Cataloging Guidelines 472
Content Description 472
Search Interfaces 473
11.3. Copyright Protection Standards 474
11.4. The Use of Consumer Information 475
11.5. Digital Products and Pricing 477
Bundling and Subscription 477
Unbundling and Micropayments 482
Micropayments and Product Quality 483
Information Products and Economics 487
11.6. Taxation and the Future of Electronic Commerce 489
Taxable Item 489
Taxes on Access 490
Taxes on Transactions 492
Sales versus Transfer of Copyrights 496
Page 21
11.7. Anonymity and Legal Environment for Commerce 497
11.8. Global Framework for Electronic Commerce 501
Convergence in Spatial Markets 502
Artificial Borders 503
Uniform Commercial Environment 505
11.9. Antitrust and Regulation Policies 510
Economies of Scale and Regulation 511
Interoperability, Standardization, and Market Dominance 513
Network Externality and Monopolization 516
Monopoly and Welfare Loss: The Problem 516
Externalities and Their Effects 520
Network Effects versus Network Externalities 522
Anticompetitive Behaviors 523
Common Carriers and Microsoft 524
Vertical Integration and Retail Wheeling 525
11.10. The Economics of Electronic Commerce and the Internet 528
The Economics of Electronic Commerce 529
The Economics of Information Infrastructure 531
11.11. Summary 533
References 534
Law for the Internet 536
Online Commerce and Taxation 536
Laws Regarding Computers 536
Internet Telephony 537
12 Future Directions for Economic Research 539
Page 22
12.1. The Role of Enabling Technologies 543
12.2. The Virtual World is Built on the Physical World 547
12.3. Components of the Virtual Economy 551
12.4. The Convergence 553
Convergence and the Market Structure 556
12.5. The Virtual Economy in Action 558
12.6. Growth of Virtual Intermediaries 563
12.7. Customization and Smart Products 566
Producer's Customization and Market Research 566
Online Market Research 568
Online Learning 569
Consumer Customization 571
12.8. Globalization and Cybernations 573
12.9. Market-Clearing Mechanisms 576
12.10. Summary 578
References 580
Smart Products 581
Habitat and Virtual Communities 581
The 21st Century Technologies 581
Index 583
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About this book

The Economics
of Electronic Commerce
Soon-Yong Choi
Dale O. Stahl
Andrew B. Whinston
Macmillan Technical Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana

Page 2
The Economics of Electronic Commerce
By Soon-Yong Choi, Dale O. Stahl, and Andrew B. Whinston
Published by:
Macmillan Technical Publishing
201 West 103rd Street
Indianapolis, IN 46290 USA
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a
review.
Copyright " 1997 by Macmillan Technical Publishing
Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Number 96-80466
ISBN 1-57870-014-0
Warning and Disclaimer
This book is designed to provide information about the Internet. Every effort
has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but
no warranty or fitness is implied.
The information is provided on an "as is" basis. The authors and Macmillan
Technical Publishing shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any
person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the
information contained in this book or from the use of the discs or programs
that may accompany it.
PublisherDon Fowley
Publisher's AssistantRosemary Lewis
Publishing ManagerTom Stone
Marketing ManagerMary Foote
Managing EditorCarla Hall
PAGE 4
Trademark Acknowledgments
All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service
marks have been appropriately capitalized. Macmillan Technical Publishing
cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book
should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service
mark.
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CHAPTER 1
Electronic Commerce and the

Internet
Our objective in this and the next two chapters is to provide you with a
framework for understanding the economic impact of the new business
medium by defining electronic commerce and the nature of digital products.
Opinions regarding the future of the Internet and electronic commerce may
vary widely, but the general consensus is that commercial uses of the Internet
will have an immense effect on businesses, governments, and consumers. The
question is, "In exactly what areas and in what ways will they be affected?" A
shared definition of electronic commerce is the first step toward presenting the
answers.
In this chapter, we discuss the characteristics of computing environments that
have made the Internet the infrastructure for electronic commerce. Presented in
section 1.1 is an overview of how computing and networking environments
have evolved into the Internet. The objective here is to highlight differences
between the Internet and previous computing and communications
environments in order to give a clearer understanding of the importance of the
Internet as a commercial medium.
Section 1.2 reviews commercial and noncommercial uses of computing and
communication technologies, and defines what electronic commerce is within
the context of changing technologies. It will be evident that
Page 2
conventional distinctions between commercial and noncommercial uses of the
Internet are no longer valid. Section 1.3 discusses the market characteristics of
electronic commerce, pointing out the differences from traditional, physical
product markets as well as issues arising from the novice nature of electronic
commerce. Finally, in section 1.4, key issues in electronic commerce are
discussed along with a look at how economic analysis may help to resolve
many uncertainties. While these snapshots put the issues in perspective, later
chapters will deal with each in depth.
1.1.Developments in Internetworking
The Internet is a network of networks. Each network is comprised of
com-puters connected by wire or wireless mediums, such as radio signals, that
enable component computers to "talk" to each other. Once computers are
networked, files on one computer can be accessed from any other computer on
the network; messages can be exchanged, and limited resources such as
printers can be shared. Large or small, each network is owned and managed by
a company or a single group with the exception of the Internet.
The Internet is not owned or managed by any single entity, although its
component networks are independent units managed and usually paid for by
the network's owners. (Chapter 3, section 3.6, covers Internet technology and
infrastructure in detail; in this chapter, we focus on general characteristics of
the Internet as a market infrastructure.) Computers on these component
networks became a part of the larger Internet when they used the same
standard for cross-communication—the TCP/IP protocol—known as the
language of the Internet. Therefore, any computer "speaking" TCP/IP protocol
is Internet-enabled in terms of connectivity.
The Internet is clearly the largest network of computers in existence today.
There are, however, many non-Internet networks such as commercial online
services that are quite large in their own right. The sudden dominance of the
Page 3
Internet as a model mechanism for information transfers and commercial
transactions may seem accidental in view of these large networks. However,
the Internet or Internet-like networks have two overriding factors in their favor
to become a market infrastructure: distributed computing and openness.
Distributed and Networked Computing
A distributed computing environment consists of multiple sites (or computers)

that are capable of performing the same type of functions or executing a
portion of a task. This is in contrast to a mainframe computer environment in
which shared users send commands and receive results via dumb terminals
connected to the computer. In a mainframe environment, all of the computing
necessary to process a task is done at the central computer (the host), whereas
terminals are used only for inputting instructions and displaying results. The
Internet, on the other hand, is an example of distributed computing in which
host and client computers are each capable of independent computing.
The distinction between a host and a client is based on which machine (or
program) provides content and service. A client machine typically establishes
a connection to a host—known also as a server—and initiates a request for a
service, such as to download a file. A web browser, for example, is a program
that runs on a client machine, whereas an httpd, which sends out HTML files
(web pages) upon request by a browser, is a program that runs on a server.
However, this distinction between a server and a client is only arbitrary. In a
distributed computer network, each connected computer can act as either a
server or a client. This potential is not obvious to many Internet initiates who
use their computers as clients only. But the strength of a distributed computer
network such as the Internet is its connectivity that supports peer-to-peer
relationships. What this means in terms of a market is that each computer or
user connected to a peer-to-peer network is a potential provider of contents, for
instance, a seller as well as a buyer. Any personal computer connected to the
Internet is capable of hosting a web site or sending a file instead of simply
acting as a tool to visit web sites and download files. The traditional division
between corporations as content providers and consumers as buyers is still
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evident in the way some commercial online services organize their services so
that subscribers are targeted only as readers or customers. Such customers are
assumed to be "surfing" the net just like television viewers and newspaper
readers are passively consuming the contents provided by the sellers.
On the contrary, the strength of the Internet lies in the potentially interactive
environment in which consumers regard themselves also as the content
providers. The proliferation of personal homepages, which is often dismissed
as a transitory fad, indicates that the Internet users understand the power of the
medium in providing content. Nevertheless, the majority of Internet users are
assumed to remain passive. To surf the net, it may be adequate to have a
passive communication device which connects and downloads files without
the capability to act as a host. A stripped-down network computer—a
web-browsing machine with limited processing power—resembles a television
receiver, or a dumb terminal of the bygone era.
Even when consumers are not selling contents on the Internet, the medium's
interactivity enables sellers to collect information about consumers' tastes and
their preferences for product quality, price, and customer service using the
medium itself. Unlike the broadcasting media, the Internet facilitates two-way
interactions between sellers and buyers, the result of which can also be fed
seamlessly into production, marketing, transaction, and consumption
processes. In short, a network means a worldwide system of interaction,
whether for business or for communication, in which computers connected to
the network are simply points of presence.
As the conventional distinction between a seller and a buyer is lost in a
distributed network such as the Internet, transactional processes undergo a
similar transformation. A typical commercial transaction involves many agents
and processes. Each of these processes performs a specific
function—production, assembly, marketing, delivery, payment clearance,
insurance, certification, and so on, which typically occur in stages. Different
intermediaries have evolved to fulfill one or more of these functions in the
physical market. Intermediaries are now evolving to fulfill these functions in a
distributed computer network, where they may be processed simultaneously by
different

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agents. The scope of market activities undertaken by these agents will be
defined as the commerce on the Internet matures. However, the organization of
agents in electronic commerce will be sufficiently different from physical
markets. For example, the traditional difference between a wholesaler and a
retailer is lost in the digital marketplace because a producer only needs to
transmit one copy to an intermediary. An efficient market organization is more
likely because activities of each agent involved in a transaction, from
production to payment and consumption, may be monitored and evaluated
more efficiently, and new product strategies and pricing can be implemented
rapidly and concurrently. Such changes in market organization are the subject
matter of later chapters.
Open Networks
Distributed computing presupposes a network. Large corporations,

governments, and research organizations have maintained extremely large
networks of computers often made up of several layers. For internal
communication and computing needs, computers are typically connected in
local area networks (LANs) using physical connections such as cables. These
LANs can then be interconnected into wide area networks (WANs) via
telephone lines or satellite links. And private value-added networks (VANs)
have been in operation for over two decades to facilitate company-to-company
transactions using electronic data interchange (EDI). The disillusioning truth in
this image of an interconnecting system of cogs is that not all LANs and
WANs can communicate with each other, because of both technical and policy
choices made by network owners. VANs, in particular, are limited to paying
members and use proprietary communication standards. A need exists for a
means to bridge the gaps between the different sized cogs that will enable
them to communicate. The Internet is one such means.
The Internet is unique as a networking environment in that it is based on open
standards which enable any computer or network to connect to it using TCP/IP
protocols. Internet Protocol (IP) is the most basic layer in communication
protocols for the Internet and handles addressing and delivery, whereas
Page 6
the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) maintains message integrity. Being
an open network is similar to postal communication systems. Once you have a
mailing address you can send and receive messages using the postal service.
There is no restriction to become a mail user, and the use of mail is not limited
to specific types of messages. Similarly, once you obtain an Internet address
for your computer—an IP address or a domain name—linking to the rest of the
computers on the Internet is a matter of connecting a cable or dialing through a
modem.
The openness of the Internet facilitates interoperability between different
computer platforms and supports the exchange of human-readable messages.
Because of this, the potential of electronic commerce over the Internet far
surpasses that of EDI or private VANs. The use of EDI was projected to be
one of the most important business developments that would have made
paper-based business transactions obsolete. Through the use of EDI,
businesses have obtained significant cost savings and gains in efficiency and
competitiveness. Nevertheless, actual use of EDI has fallen far short of
projections.
The primary reason for the limited use of EDI is its requirement for asset-
specific investments. A large amount of capital investment is necessary to
construct an EDI system because EDI transactions depend on proprietary
software. Each time interaction with a new EDI system becomes necessary,
new hardware and software must first be developed. But perhaps, most
significantly, EDI transactions are limited to machine-to-machine
communications based on machine-readable forms. Due to these factors, EDI
is limited to a small set of predetermined transaction data, whereas normal
communications between companies are conducted via paper, telephone, fax,
and other conventional methods.
The Internet, in contrast, offers a very different medium of communication.
The strength of the Internet lies in its versatility in transmitting various file
formats and the nature of open-end networking. Using a wide variety of
application software, users of the Internet can conduct many activities that EDI
simply does not support. The rapid growth of the World Wide Web, for
example, has demonstrated the importance of communicating multimedia
contents and user-friendly interfaces. At the same time, the ease in using web
Page 7
browsers and authoring software, such as HyperText Markup Language
(HTML), has enabled all computers that are connected to the Internet to
become content providers instead of being simply receivers of information.
These advantages have spurred the use of the Internet as a tool for
communications and commercial transactions. Electronic commerce based on
an open Internet will affect all aspects of a market instead of duplicating
traditional seller-to-buyer market relationships, yielding a whole new area of
economic research.
The Internet, despite such advantages, has a series of potential problems.
Although the openness of the TCP/IP protocol suite is the reason why the
Internet is growing so fast, it also poses a serious problem as a commercial
medium due to the fundamental lack of security measures in TCP/IP (Bhimani,
1996). Compared to private VANs, the Internet has many weaknesses in this
respect. Messages can easily be wiretapped and eavesdropped during
transmission. The messages could then be altered and sent to another party.
Because of this, the receiving party cannot be assured of the identity of the
original sender. Challenges exist to meeting many essential security
requirements for computer transactions: confidentiality, authentication, data
integrity, and repudiation.
How serious are these security problems when the Internet is used for
commerce? After all, access control for any computer on the Internet can be
achieved by using access passwords, firewalls, or by simply disconnecting
from the network when not in use. In general, only those files designated for
sharing by owners can be transferred. To secure confidential and authenticated
messages, encryption and digital signature technologies that provide
content-level security are already being adopted. Such security measures are
applied to each message being transmitted just as a secure envelope with a
tamper-resistant seal protects a message within. Alternatively, the transfer
medium may be secured, such as the communication line itself. The next
generation Internet protocols will incorporate security measures on TCP/IP
layers thereby securing the transfer conduit itself (Hinden, 1996). In short,
with adequate access control and content security, via encryption, today's
Internet offers a rather robust, albeit imperfect, security.

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While the level of performance guarantee for the Internet is lower than that for
private networks, the chance for a catastrophic failure is lower for the Internet
compared to a private network that is controlled and administered by a central
authority. A message traveling on the Internet will be rerouted if a part of the
Internet fails. At the same time, eavesdropping on the Internet is not targeted
or specific, as in the case of private networks. Since private networks carry
designated information over the same network, the result of a security breach
will be more severe than on the Internet, where message packets travel in
mixed jumbles. When the next generation of Internet standards are
implemented along with content-level encryption, the security of the Internet
may become a concern in mostly isolated instances.
While security and reliability will significantly increase in the next generation
Internet, its ever-increasing traffic due to multimedia, real-time, and
broadcasting applications may not result in any noticeable improvement in
terms of network congestion. More efficient compression technologies, faster
modems, and larger pipelines will certainly increase the absolute size of the
Internet bandwidth. However, cheaper and more abundant integrated circuits
and powerful microprocessors have been overwhelmed by concurrent, or
outpacing, increases in the demand for computational power. Similarly,
congestion may become a more critical issue in electronic commerce than
network security problems that have worried many prospective online
marketers.
Who Controls the Internet?
From its beginning in 1969 as ARPAnet (Advanced Research
Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department), connections to
the Internet have been based on open standards to provide
flexibility and robustness in order to maintain communications
capability even under a catastrophic disaster or a serious system
failure in some of the network's component computers.
As the Internet grew into a network of networks, no single
computer or network acted as a central authority. However, as in
other social organizations, there are certain groups whose
opinions matter.
Page 9
At the top of these groups is the Internet Society or ISOC
(http://info.isoc.org/index.html), shown in figure 1.1. The Internet
Society is a volunteer membership organization that appoints the
Internet Architecture Board, or the IAB (http://www.iab.org/iab/).
The IAB is responsible for maintaining interoperable standards
for communications as well as Internet addressing.
Figure 1.1 The Internet Society home page.

The Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF
(http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/) is another volunteer
organization that sets up working groups to deal with operational
and short-term technical problems. Anyone can participate in
these working groups. Their reports are recommendations for
voluntary adoption or may be sent to the IAB for more official
treatment. As a participant and a user of the Internet, any network
needs to follow both IAB and IETF decisions and reports.
Ignoring the recommendations by these bodies often leaves no
choice but to disconnect from the Internet.
Two-way Communications and the Web
The Internet can be thought of as a two-way broadcast system with the

capacity to send targeted messages to individuals. It combines the
characteristics of two-way communications, such as telephone and fax
Page 10
(one-to-one communications), with those of broadcast media, such as radio
and television (one-to-many communications). It is not an exaggerated
prediction that the Internet, spurred on by the World Wide Web (WWW or the
web), will someday supersede all these communication mediums.
The significance of the World Wide Web cannot be overemphasized in the
development of the Internet and electronic commerce. The web has been
touted as a multimedia presentation tool that is capable of enticing more
attention from viewers through interactive activities as opposed to earlier
text-based file transfer programs (see "Predecessors of the Web," p.11). But
the even greater significance of the web lies in its capability for two-way,
many-to-many communication. Today's Internet marketers concentrate on
developing colorful and jazzy web pages to elicit visitors' attention. The
premise of this advertising, which is based on broadcast media, is to maximize
the number of "eyeballs" and their attention span using the most common
denominators, such as sex and violence. But Internet marketers have
discovered that advertising methods based on one-to-many broadcasting
attracts responses, often negative, from the viewers. And unlike over-the-air
commercials or mass-mail advertising, users of email can simply click a reply
button to express their opinion, and their messages travel back over the same
medium to the source of those advertisements.
A two-way broadcast system that gives the same level of reach, at a low cost,
to everyone connected to the network also means that large corporations and
companies do not necessarily dominate the marketing and distribution in the
market. If wordprocessors have made desktop publishing possible, the web and
its authoring language (HTML) have made everyone a potential publisher.
And with e-mail, these potential publishers have access to the same marketing
medium as large corporations.
Increasingly, web browsers are becoming web publishers. As the number of
web surfers grows, more and more of these net-travelers are putting up their
own web pages to establish their points of presence. Subscribers to America
Online, Inc. (http://www.aol.com), can now make their own personal web
pages on the access provider's web server. Today, web servers usually reside
on expensive workstations because of their system requirements. But within a
few
Page 11
years, web servers will be as simple as web browsers and as easily installed
and maintained on small computers. Personal web servers and the personal
web contents residing on these servers will establish a truly two-way
communication and will be a significant factor in growing Internet
communication and commerce.
Predecessors of the Web
The World Wide Web is only the most recent development
designed to simplify the user interface for file transfer by
automating transfers and enriching content presentation. Until
very recently, the most frequently used method for transferring
files was the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which requires a
remote login and allows only authorized users to connect. If you
don't want to limit access, an anonymous FTP can be set up that
allows guest logins by virtually anyone on the Internet.
Automated anonymous FTP programs were the next step in
presenting nontechnical connections to users, but users still had to
log out and log in whenever they wanted to connect to another
site. The next development following the automated FTP
programs was Gopher service, which ena-bled users to log into
many sites in one session. Simple and consistent, a Gopher client
presents users with a series of menus in a hierarchy. FTP reached
the pinnacle of its popularity in 1993, and Gopher service was
rapidly increasing in 1994.
Conversely, the World Wide Web has reversed the growth of
both. It has replaced FTP as the easiest and most popular way to
transfer files, and has replaced Gopher as the preferred method for
presenting files and information. Similar to Gopher, the web
allows users to browse different sites in one session, but instead
of hierarchical menus it uses jumps via hypertexted links to other
web pages. Each web page is essentially a different connection,
which admittedly slows down data access. But unlike previous
methods, the web has an added feature of being able to transmit
and display nontext files. This capability to present digitized
audio and video files compensates in many cases for the loss in
speed. Perhaps the most important feature, however, is the
authoring program, HTML, which is easy enough for
nontechnical people to construct their own web pages. This
enables them to be content providers as well as content receivers.
This combination of advantages is fast eclipsing its Internet
counterparts. While the web transmission grew from almost zero
to over 30 percent of the total data sent over the National Science
Foundation NET (NSFNET)—the Internet's backbone until
1995—the share of FTP transactions has fallen by a third (see
figure 1.2). Many files previously designated for public access
under anonymous FTP and Gopher servers are now being moved
to web servers and eventually the web may replace all other file
transfer methods.

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Figure 1.2 Types of data sent over the NSFNET backbone.

Source: Data from
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html.
1.2.Electronic Commerce
In this section, electronic commerce is defined. This is not as simple as it
sounds, because electronic commerce is a fast-moving target. The definition is
ever-changing and expanding to include more and more sectors of the
economy, as the influence of electronic communications extends. A
conventional definition emphasizes technological aspects in an attempt to
provide a lasting concept. The following sections stress economic aspects and
define electronic commerce as a new market offering a new type of
commodity, such as digital products through digital processes. Sellers of
physical products are affected as well by digital processes—online ordering,
market research, and payment settlement—and are part of this new market.
Page 13
Electronic Commerce Examples
Technology is transforming many aspects of business and market activities. In

its broadest sense, electronic commerce refers to the use of electronic means
and technologies to conduct commerce, including within-business,
business-to-business, and business-to-consumer interactions. The enabling
technologies, of course, are also used for noncommercial activities such as
entertainment, communication, filing and paying taxes, managing personal
finance, research, and education, which may still include the services of online
companies. As a result, it is somewhat difficult—and sometimes arbitrary—to
separate electronic commerce areas from noncommercial applications of the
same technologies and infrastructure.
Nevertheless, what characterizes electronic commerce is the pervasiveness of
technology. For example, Mobil (http://www.mobil.com) gas stations in St.
Louis are testing a windshield-mounted radio device, by which customers can
get credit card approval and activate a gas pump by the time they get out of
their cars. Customer preferences are also recorded in the device so that a cup
of coffee or a newspaper can be delivered to their cars while they are pumping
gas. Office Max (http://www.officemax.com) plans to install kiosks in banks
and malls, which offer access to the company's full inventory of products and
enable customers to order and pay for products to be delivered. Personal
services for those pressed for time are moving from telephone to the Internet,
with easy customization for product selection, payment, and delivery. In
Boston, several online grocery shopping businesses (notably Peapod at
http://www.pea-pod.com) deliver groceries, while Streamline (http://www.
stream-lined.com) adds dry cleaning and video rental services.
Although these may be cutting-edge applications, conventional electronic
commerce areas include:
● Searching for product information
● Ordering products
● Paying for goods and services
● Customer service
Page 14
All are conducted online. The use of the Internet to support marketing and
customer-interface is only part of electronic innovations that are changing the
way firms do business. With intranets, corporations distribute internal memos
and announcements to their employees, and knowledge exchange and
scheduling communications flow worldwide in a timely fashion. With direct
connection to suppliers (for instance, an extended intranet), the same
technology is used for manufacturing and supply-chain management. 3M
(http://www. mmm.com), for example, expanded its EDI service to the
Internet, allowing its over 2,000 suppliers and customers access to its EDI
transactions via any way they choose—private VANs, phones, and faxes, as
well as the Internet. To sum up, for within-business, business-to-consumer,
and business-to-business applications, electronic commerce includes:
● Internal electronic mail and messaging
● Online publishing of corporate documents
● Online searches for documents, projects, and peer knowledge
● Distributing critical and timely information to employees
● Managing corporate finance and personnel systems
● Manufacturing logistics management

● Supply chain management for inventory, distribution, and warehousing
● Sending order processing information and reports to suppliers and
customers
● Tracking orders and shipments
and countless other business activities. More important than the mere number
of areas being affected by electronic commerce is the fact that these activities
can be integrated into a holistic business process. Thus, all the areas mentioned
above are not really a separate application, but rather, one aspect of the whole
electronic commerce process. For example, inventory and supply management
is tied to production as well as to the demand data collected from consumers
ordering via web stores. In short, the business potential of electronic
commerce is the capability to innovate and integrate business and market
processes. The most obvious and immediate use is achieving transactional
efficiency.
Page 15
Electronic Commerce as a Communications Network
At the core of traditional electronic commerce is the use of electronic means to

expedite commercial transactions and improve efficiencies in business
processes and organizations. In this vein, electronic commerce on the Internet
means online ordering and payments. The narrowest definition of what
electronic commerce is holds that electronic commerce on the Internet is a
networked electronic data interchange (EDI) with a more flexible messaging
system. Traditional EDIs are limited to signals that only computers can read
and that correspond to information on electronic forms used in standard
business transactions, such as ordering, invoicing, and shipping. An open EDI
using the Internet means that EDI messages may be sent and received via
email. On the next level of sophistication, EDI can use electronic forms made
available on web pages for customers to order. This view considers electronic
commerce and the use of the Internet as merely improving business and
communication, especially in business-to-business transactions. Accordingly,
issues in doing business on the Internet are mainly organizational and
operational, ranging from security, competitive advantages in product
development, and R&D (research and development), to efficiencies from
automating purchasing functions, EDIs, point of sale information, and other
interorganiza-tional transactions.
To many familiar with EDIs, doing commerce on the Internet is not entirely
advantageous compared to traditional EDIs. A clear tradeoff is made between
secure, but limited VANs using traditional EDIs and an insecure, but far more
flexible network with messaging and remote login possibilities over the
Internet. For example, Chevron Corp. of San Francisco pays over $1,200 each
time it sends an EDI report to the U.S. government via a private VAN. In
comparison, it pays about $2,000 per month for unlimited access to the
Internet (Radosevich, 1996). However, many consider the Internet to be
inferior to EDIs because of the perceived lack of security and reliability, even
though they are adjusting their EDI strategies to include the Internet. Already,
Internet-oriented EDI applications, such as EDI/Open and Templar by
Premonos Corp. (http://www.premonos.com), have reduced EDI prices and

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afforded small and medium size companies to take advantage of electronic
transactions.
However, many interactions between sellers and buyers happen before they are
ready to exchange orders and bills. A somewhat broader view of electronic
commerce includes these interactions between businesses and consumers.
Consumer services and product announcements have been routinely released to
the Internet by computer companies for many years. And increasingly, firms are
gearing up for Internet advertising and marketing. Going even further down the
digital road, electronic shops and malls are springing up that offer electronic
versions of catalog shopping in which consumers can search and order products
using web browsers, bypassing traditional paper and phone-based
merchandising. Organizations devoted to commercial uses of the Internet such
as CommerceNet (http://ww.commerce.net) and government agencies such as
the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov) have encouraged doing business electronically by
virtue of their presence on the Internet. As recently as September, 1996,
Yahoo!'s list of online malls contained over 700 shops (http://www.yahoo.
com/text/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Shopping_Centers/Online_Malls)
and Open Market's Commercial Sites Index contained 41,731 listings of
commercial web sites in October, 1996
(http://www.directory.net/dir/statistics.html).
Electronic Commerce of Digital Products
Despite the broadening view on electronic commerce, the commercial Internet

is still seen primarily as a new medium of communication, like an open and
interactive version of a magazine, television, or telephone. As an efficient
communications medium, the Internet can be used to facilitate marketing,
advertising, ordering, and customer service functions of the business
organizations, lessening their dependence on traditional media. With the
development of digital currency, many aspects of payment clearing procedures
will also change significantly, particularly in terms of per-transaction cost and
speed. Such changes in marketing, payment, and customer service will affect
the markets for both physical and digital products—for example an online
Page 17
furniture dealer as well as an electronic magazine distributor. However, even
more fundamental changes will accompany the online sale of digital products
since they, unlike physical products, can be both produced and delivered over
the network, transforming the very tenets of the manufacturing and distribution
functions.
This business of digital products is radically advanced from conventional
electronic commerce areas, and requires further developments in
communications infrastructure, electronic payment systems, appropriate laws
regarding copyright and sales taxes, liability and consumer protection laws, and
so on. It is no longer doing the same business electronically, but instead,
demands new business models and processes to take full advantage of the
enabling technologies in the multimedia industry. This core of electronic
commerce, as distinguished from conventional electronic commerce areas, is
referred to as a "fully-digital business."
Figure 1.3 shows the difference between the core of electronic commerce and
conventional electronic areas. A market is composed of three components:
players (or agents), products, and processes. Market players are sellers, buyers,
intermediaries, and other third parties, such as governments and consumer
advocacy groups. Products are the commodities being exchanged. The
interactions between market agents regarding products and other market
activities are processes, which include product selection, production, market
research, searches, ordering, payment, delivery, and consumption. These three
components of a market may be either physical (offline) or digital (online). The
horizontal axis in figure 1.3 represents whether market players are digital or
physical. For example, a web store is digital; a department store is physical.
Online shoppers are digital; shoppers in a mall are physical. Similarly, the
vertical axis represents the degree to which a product is digitized. For example,
a printed newspaper is physical, whereas its online version is digital. CD-ROMs
are in-between because their contents are digital products but packaged in
physical containers. Finally, the third axis shows whether a process is digital.
Visiting a store is a physical process, whereas searching on the web is a digital
process.
Page 18
The traditional commerce—the lower-left cube in the figure—is where all three
components are physical. In contrast, these components are all digital at the
core of electronic commerce, where not only production, but also delivery,
payment, and consumption (reading online or processing by a computer
program) occur online. The remaining white areas are part of conventional
electronic commerce, in which some of the components are digital. For
example, products may be physical, but marketing and payment may be
conducted online; products may be digital, but payments could be made via
checks, or buyers may be reading printouts instead of screen outputs. The
growing use of digital processes for business-to-business transactions and
consumer marketing is evident in the figure, which shows that electronic
commerce dominates the traditional market.
Figure 1.3 Electronic commerce areas.

Most of current electronic commerce applications and issues fall within the
white areas of figure 1.3, dealing with one aspect on a particular axis, for
example, setting up a web store, content digitization, electronic payments,
online marketing, and so on. Later chapters in this book also tackle these issues
one by one, and consumers are not limited to digital product sellers. However,
in each chapter, every effort to analyze an issue in a broader context that
includes all three components of a market is made. Therefore, product
Page 19
digitization (of the product axis) is discussed in connection with online
consumption and digital marketing (of the process axis) and the role of web
store sales representatives (of the player axis).
Market activities, from production to consumption, occurring online, bypassing
all paper-based transactions and traditional communications media, represent
the future of electronic commerce. The Internet becomes not only an alternative
communication medium, but a microcosm, or an electronic version, of physical
markets with characteristics that are fundamentally different from physical
markets. This digital world of business, in which market institutions, agents,
and products are becoming "virtual" and native to the Internet, is also at the
core of electronic commerce economics.
The main difference between the digital world of business and the traditional,
physical business world stems from the very nature of digitized products, which
is discussed in Chapter 2. However, there are many reasons why consumers too
will behave differently in a networked market. For example, access to product
information via the network using sophisticated computer programs will
certainly affect the way consumers compare prices. In turn, efficient shopping
will affect product choices, pricing strategies, and competitive efforts among
sellers. Business organizations and relationships will also be affected as spatial
and temporal limitations of the market are removed and replaced by different
considerations of costs, efficiencies, and the mode of interaction on a network.
In other words, the market environment, enabled by the open distributed
Internet, resembles no other physical market. The physical distance and
geographical topology of a market are replaced with network architectures and
preference-based market territories. Thus, the objective is to investigate the
economic aspects of this newly emerging market of electronic commerce by
applying standard economic tools and by evaluating qualitative differences in
economic efficiencies and organizational changes.
This analysis of the electronic commerce market is timelier than you might
think. The scope of digital products, and correspondingly, the scope of
electronic commerce, will be much wider than we imagine today, and broaden
much sooner. Although digitized information products are only a small portion
of Internet-traded goods today, suitable online payment systems,

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especially for small value items, will spur an explosive growth in digital
products trading. In the immediate future, CD-ROM and disk-based sales will
be conducted online as the transmission speed bottleneck is removed. And
digital products are not limited to information or "infotainment" products. All
paper-based products, like posters, calendars, and all sorts of tickets, and all
other products comprised of graphics, images, and sound can be converted into
or replaced by digital counterparts. Even some products representing value
may take a digital form, as in digital currency and electronic checks, stocks,
and bonds. Some purely physical products are made into smart products that
allow digital interfaces for monitoring and control—smart cars, smart boilers,
and home security systems. Users will be able to interact with these products
via email, exchange personal settings online, or download trouble-shooting
programs. Essentially, all types of business services and processes have the
potential to become digital products exchanged on a digital network,
expanding the core of electronic commerce (see figure 1.4). Whether directly,
through their own businesses, or through the businesses of their competitors,
the producers of both digital and physical products will be affected by the
trends in electronic commerce.
Figure 1.4 The growth of electronic commerce areas.

Page 21
Commercial Potential of the Internet
Businesses need to place electronic commerce within the context of broader

uses of the Internet than the traditional commercial framework. As a market,
electronic commerce impacts not only marketing but also production and
consumption. Information collected through web stores is used to customize
products, to forecast future demand, and to formulate business strategies.
Consumers not only order and pay for products online, but also search for
product information, reveal their preferences, negotiate with sellers, exchange
information about products and firms, and use products online by filtering,
processing, and linking them with other computer programs. Likewise, supply
chain relationships among businesses and competitive strategies need to aim at
increasing the overall market efficiency, not just transactional efficiency.
The Internet can certainly be used as an alternative marketing channel, selling
existing products online, but the future of electronic commerce will be guided
by innovative digital products and services that will emerge in the electronic
marketplace. But from where are these products and processes coming? The
explosive growth of the Internet gives a partial answer. The core of digital
commerce comes from selling digital products, but no one is certain how big
the digital product market will become. To get an idea, one only needs to list
products that can be digitized: all paper-based information products such as
newspapers, magazines, books, journals, and databases; computer software,
and games; audio products, including music, and speeches; video and
multimedia products, such as movies and television programs; other
information products, such as weather reports, stock quotes, government
information, consumer information, and even personal information; and digital
counterparts for existing products, such as room keys, digital currency, digital
checks and other financial instruments, airline and concert tickets, and so on.
Many business professionals dismiss the commercial potential of the Inter-net,
pointing out that the most common uses of the Internet and the web are
browsing and entertainment. In turn, the most promising use of the Internet
technology is found in intranets and other within-business and
business-to-business applications, in which EDIs and corporate networking are
already
Page 22
familiar. A survey found that only about one in ten uses the Internet for
shopping (GVU Web Survey (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys)).
However, shopping here is very narrowly defined. Internet users seeking
information are, in fact, in search of products, and thus, network uses
commonly categorized as informational and entertainment activities need not
be viewed separately from commercial activities. Unlike television
entertainment in which commercial advertising and noncommercial
entertainment are alternatively presented, commercial uses of the Internet
encompass all aspects of user activities. Even e-mail messages can be thought
of as digital products, for instance digitized information, which can be sold
directly as a product or used as a component of business transactions. All
so-called non-commercial activities on the Internet are indeed commercial, an
important realization for digital product sellers. In a truly informational age,
the immense amount of human knowledge already accumulated and linked via
the Internet will be the product being exchanged. As Christopher Anderson of
The Economist argued, "In the audacious uselessness of millions of personal
fish tanks (web pages) lie the seeds of the Internet revolution" (1995). These
fish tanks are displayed side by side with products marketed by America's
corporate giants.
1.3.Market Characteristics of Electronic Commerce

As mentioned earlier, electronic commerce today consists of two interrelated
strands of network computing: 1) an expanded use of open networks by
traditional EDIs to interconnect private networks with the Internet; and 2) an
entirely new marketplace on the Internet using the World Wide Web
technology. While large businesses and information management professionals
are familiar with EDIs, the public and consumers, unaware of existing
electronic business transactions, see electronic commerce on the Internet as a
completely new market. In this section, the status of this new market is
reviewed, detailing the pattern of usage, the characteristics of its users and
market institutions, as well as the relevant legal environment.
Page 23
Current Commercial Uses of the Internet
The size of the market, judged by the number of agents or domain names, is
growing rapidly on the Internet. The growth rate in the number of Internet
hosts is exponential; it grew from about 300,000 in 1990 to over 12 million by
the end of 1996 (see figure 1.5). Admittedly, most of these Internet sites are
only potentially commercial. But the awareness of its commercial use among
businesses is growing. According to the O'Reilly & Associates' Internet Survey
(http://www.ora.com), almost half of all large companies with 1000 or more
employees surveyed in 1995 have created an Internet presence through
publicly accessible World Wide Web pages
(http://www.ora.com/gnn/bus/ora/survey/index.html). Medium-size companies
(between 101 and 999 employees) show a weaker presence at 35 percent.
Although the relatively lower cost and larger reach of Internet-based marketing
and commerce is very well suited to small and medium companies, large
companies seem to have more experience from EDIs and better recognize the
need for establishing their presence.
Figure 1.5 The growth of the Internet Hosts (1981_1996).

Source: Internet Domain Survey
(http://www.nw.com/zone/host-count-history).


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The same survey reports that many of these companies are not entirely
convinced that the Internet has improved the business environment
significantly. At present, most Internet-savvy companies are content to provide
company and product information for public access, and to augment electronic
messaging capabilities for intrabusiness communications by adding intranets
into their corporate networks. While the interest for commercial use of the
Internet is growing, there seems to be a widespread skepticism and uncertainty
about the potential of Internet commerce. A more willing acceptance for doing
business online depends on these companies gaining a better understanding of
how electronic commerce applies to their line of business as well as learning
business and marketing strategies appropriate for the Internet. The first step
toward this is to define clearly how and what kinds of commercial activities
are being conducted electronically.
Primary commercial uses on the Internet, other than EDIs, are advertising and
customer services. Online advertising has generated about $150-$200 million
dollars, up significantly from $10-$15 million in 1995 (Nua Internet Survey
(http://www.nua.ie)). This advertising revenue is the amount Internet
marketers received for their services, such as Internet billboards now common
in search sites, targeted emailing, and customized web advertising. However,
establishing a web storefront accounts for a significant portion of Internet
advertising activities, which is not fully reflected when we calculate
advertising revenues in a traditional way.
Through web presence and emailing, companies are establishing consumer
contacts as well as providing after-sale consumer services online and new
product and update announcements. For example, Apple Computers, Inc.
(http://www.info.apple.com) maintains over 20 mailing lists that send out new
hardware and software information, dispatch press releases, and hold open
discussions among users.
Transactions, such as payments and delivery, are conducted via traditional
communications media. One sector of business that actually delivers products
online is the online publishing industry that offers digitized products, such as
electronic databases, newspapers, magazines, and journals. It is also
Page 25
increasingly common for companies to deliver freeware, shareware, or demo
version software online. Even in these cases, however, payments are still made
by traditional means. While credit card information is transmitted online,
actual payment and clearance are done offline.
Electronic commerce as a marketplace still lacks many components. First,
despite increasing investments to upgrade and widen the bandwidth, many
bottlenecks exist, especially at the last mile that connects individual users to
the Internet—the ramp to the information highway. The long-run prospect is
not optimistic either. With the increase in the multimedia contents of web
pages and increasing uses of broadcasting and real-time applications, the
network has become highly congested. Some humorously contend that WWW
stands for the World Wide Wait. Second, data transmission must be made
secure from tampering. While encryption technologies secure messages
transmitted on an insecure pipeline, protocol level security measures are
undergoing considerations to be implemented in the next generation Internet
Protocol (IPng). Third, secure and reliable online payment systems must be
effective and widespread. With developments in these areas, all aspects of
business transactions may be conducted electronically. More importantly,
solving these problems will enable the trading of digital products, making the
Internet a true electronic market.
User Characteristics
Despite the constraints listed above, between ten and twenty million users are
already connected to the Internet according to various surveys conducted in
1995 and 1996. We can get an idea of the latest potential for an increase by
comparing this with the 95 million television households in the U.S. and about
50 to 60 million households that subscribe to cable television service. Already,
the Internet's reach is almost half that of cable television, which, for
comparison, was launched in the late 1940s as community antenna television
(CATV) and took off during the 1970s with the help of cable-only networks.
Still, Internet users—being technically savvy, relatively wealthy, educated,
males—are quite unlike the general population.
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One limiting factor for more widespread Internet use is the cost. To connect to
the Internet a typical home-based user needs a computer, a modem, a
telephone line, and an account with an Internet service provider. Even more
desirable is a faster direct connection using Ethernet or ISDN instead of
modem-based phone dialing, but because of costs associated with direct
connections, most home-based users suffer from slow and unreliable
connections via ordinary phone lines. While the telephone companies and
cable companies have proposed to set up an information superhighway that
will solve the transmission bottleneck for many years, their willingness to
invest in this has been limited by the current use of the Internet, which is more
informational than commercial, and thus reduces consumers' willingness to
pay for upgraded services.
In the meantime, reduced personal computer prices are leading to a rapid
increase in the number of home PCs, another prerequisite to Internet hookup.
According to a 1996 survey by Computer Intelligence Infocorp., almost 40
percent of all U.S. homes now have one or more PCs (Wall Street Journal, 21
May, 1996), and this increase is still growing. The number of homes with PCs
in 1995 was 16 percent. Growth is also seen among low to middle income
families as well as among the over 60 population. Some key demographic
figures of Internet users were revealed by the 5th World Wide Web survey
done by the Graphic, Visualization & Usability Center of Georgia Tech
University. In 1996, the average user was 33-years-old with a mean household
income of $59,000. Over half of the respondents had either educational
occupations or computer-related jobs (60 percent). Among the rest, 30 percent
belonged to professional or management occupations. Of all the respondents
about 32 percent were female. Even though this survey has a clear sample
selection bias (based on voluntary participation), it generally confirms that
Internet users are young, male professionals with higher than average income.
Nevertheless, the trend from the last two years shows that the percentage of
female Internet users and users in other age groups has been increasing.
The same survey also polled users on how willing they were to pay for access
to web sites. Interestingly, a full 65 percent said they would not pay, a

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higher percentage than found in previous surveys. The authors attributed this
to the fact that people primarily used the WWW for entertainment and
browsing and that they already paid connection charges. About 12 percent said
that they were willing to pay some fees on a subscription model, while another
11 percent would agree to pay on a pay-per-view basis. Although different
payment systems would likely be based on the type of information sold rather
than on consumer preference—a subscription model would be relevant for
large databases or newspapers that offer updated information, whereas for
one-time use information, pay-per-view would be appropriate—the survey
findings raise the important question of how access charges and payment for
contents will be managed in the future.
Competition and Market Organization
Today's Internet users may be different from the general population in many
ways, until the majority of the populations participate in the market. However,
electronic commerce as a marketplace differs fundamentally from other
physical markets in many respects. For example, the size of a firm is not a
significant factor in establishing one's presence in the virtual marketplace. Big
and small companies can be located side by side with no difference in shop
floors or interior decorations. Consumers can search for product information
and compare prices over the whole Internet where geographical distance plays
no role. From an economics perspective, electronic commerce has many
characteristics of a perfectly competitive market. Although perfect competition
has been the basis of most economic studies by which we evaluate economic
efficiency, it is far more an exception in real life than the norm. Electronic
commerce presents an experimental stage to further realize the economic
efficiency of a competitive market.
Both economists and government regulators use perfect competition as a
benchmark against which market efficiency is judged. In a perfectly
competitive market, a commodity is produced for which the consumer's
willingness to pay equals the marginal cost of producing the commodity, and
neither sellers nor buyers can influence supply or demand conditions
individually or
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collectively. A society cannot improve its economic welfare by deviating from
competitive markets. However, perfect competition is seldom evident in real
markets because it requires that several assumptions be met. Among the
assumptions are:
● Many potential buyers and sellers must be able to enter and exit the
market at no cost (no barriers to entry)
● There are many sellers and buyers who cannot individually influence the
market (price takers)
● Products are homogeneous (no product differentiation)
● Buyers and sellers both know the price and quality of the product
(perfect information).
Although wholesale agricultural markets are often cited as one example of a
perfectly competitive market, in most other markets one of the above
assumptions, and often all four, will not be met. Heavy investment
requirements in manufacturing facilities and R&D often limit free entry by
competitors. Advertising also influences consumer behavior by changing
demand preferences or establishing reputation, which gives sellers a degree of
market power. To exploit taste differences among buyers, firms sell
differentiated products by brands or by quality, which as a result limits the
competitive effects on prices. Finally, both sellers and buyers have limited
information about demand and product quality given that it is costly to learn
about product quality, prices, and even the location of shops. Indeed, if sellers
and buyers were perfectly informed, there would be no need for advertising,
marketing, or sales efforts.
Even at a quick glance, the electronic marketplace better resembles the abstract
market of many sellers and buyers in which prices are determined efficiently
by supply and demand. The most important differences are lowered barriers to
entry (low overhead costs) and the opportunity to search and obtain perfect
information about products and demand.
The Internet is supposed to be the great equalizer, where big corporations will
have no inherent advantage over small vendors. In physical markets, bigness
has certain advantages, helping firms to command a larger presence in
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physical form, market share, and reputation. The importance of this `big'
presence to consumers is that it presents a signal of the quality of a firm's
products. We know that products sold by big firms are not necessarily of
higher quality, but it is one viable signal available in the physical market. A
similar correlation between bigness and assumed quality does not exist in
electronic commerce, lowering the barriers to entry.
Another characteristic of the ephemeral perfectly competitive market, the
availability of perfect information, is typically undermined in physical markets
by the consumers' inability to search completely or at a cost that reflects the
value of searched information. In electronic markets, automated indexing and
cataloging technologies that gather and present information at low cost aid a
complete search. The search for information is then as efficient as is allowed
by search services. Using conventional economic reasoning, however, a
complete indexing of the entire digital universe may not be economical,
although desirable. Nevertheless, indexing and cataloging have been the most
important Internet-based activities. Along with search services, they provide
means to advertise web pages and to direct browsers to specific sites. Because
of their importance, search services may be the first to be commercialized with
access fees, but it will be essential to maintain search fees as low as possible,
perhaps through competition, in order to minimize transactions costs.
Contrary to intuition, not only buyers benefit from perfect information, but so
can sellers. Electronic transmissions generally leave a trail of information
about consumer demand and tastes, which has a high value in its own right.
Refined demand information is useful in reducing wastes due to demand
uncertainty. Also, it leads to greater product diversity, enabling consumers to
obtain customized products that better match their preferences instead of
products that represent the average tastes of consumers. The flip-side effect of
this is the ability for sellers to charge the maximum price consumers are
willing to pay, which is discussed in Chapter 8, increasing sellers' market
power rather than reducing it.

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Despite the benefits to both sides, informational efficiency in electronic
commerce is not guaranteed. The consumers' need to know about products and
the seller's desire to gain more knowledge about consumers' preferences have
to be balanced to avoid one taking advantage of the other. Clearly, complete
product information will be available only if sellers are willing to provide that
information just as consumer information is limited by the willingness of
consumers to reveal their preferences. Fully customized products may increase
the total social welfare but transfer benefits from consumers to firms. It
remains important, however, to recognize the unique potential for perfectly
informed sellers and buyers that electronic commerce presents.
Business Organization and Virtual Firms
When the World Wide Web first gained in popularity, many firms created web
pages and initiated direct contact with consumers. Increasingly, however, web
page development is contracted out to professionals, and many Internet-based
marketing activities are handled by intermediaries. Even sales in electronic
malls may be delegated to intermediary merchants, with the firms having no
direct contact with the buyers. Since physical distance is not a barrier to
business transactions, the electronic marketplace may resemble the
face-to-face business of the old tradition, making such intermediaries
unnecessary. On the other hand, market intermediaries have traditionally
played other functions designed to enhance efficiency. The new electronic
marketplace will necessitate new innovative models of firm organization,
production, delivery, and overall market institutions, including a close
examination of the role of intermediaries. Chapter 4 discusses this fundamental
issue in detail.
Other time-tested, basic business assumptions can no longer be presumed to
hold true in this new world. In the electronic age, firms no longer are based in
a single location because all functions need not be operated in one locale.
Going beyond even decentralization, a firm on the Internet becomes a
distributed company, or a virtual firm, where any operation can be anywhere.
A company like First Virtual (http://www.fv.com), for example, exists only on
a network (Borenstein et al., 1996). The critical difference between this and a
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multi-office corporation is that a virtual firm's day-to-day operation is also
conducted on a network. The mundane aspects of managing a
company—administrative tasks, scheduling meetings, supervision of remotely
located employees, and so on—appear to be the greatest challenge of a virtual
company because coordinating such matters most often depends on traditional
means of communication.
A promising application of electronic commerce for a virtual firm is to use the
web technology for within-business and business-to-business interactions.
Business logistics including supplier management, inventory, warehousing,
and invoicing can be integrated in a corporation-wide intranet, or intraweb,
which is defined as "a secure corporate network with rich functional features
of Local Area Networks interconnected by the Internet or its technologies and
applications" (Chellappa et al., 1997). Suppliers and customers are given
appropriate levels of access to intranets so that employees, suppliers, and
customers can be integrated in the firm's production and sales functions in a
network rather than a physical locale.
Another still unanswered question is whether interfirm relationships of virtual
firms will be different in electronic commerce. Economists have argued that a
firm is an organization by which producers can internalize transaction costs,
which are costs incurred in transacting business such as writing, monitoring,
and enforcing contracts. For example, if the cost of contracting bookkeeping
and accounting with an outside CPA (Certified Public Accounting) firm is
high, a firm may reduce costs by establishing an accounting department of its
own to handle the tasks. In an extreme case, a firm may find it efficient to
handle all activities from production, marketing, and payment to delivery.
When transaction costs are low, on the other hand, many functions done within
a firm may be contracted out in a market (see section 4.3). To the extent that
electronic commerce reduces transaction costs, firms will contract out or
delegate many of their functions to other agents in the market.
Increasing use of contracting implies a more fluid interfirm relationship and a
more decentralized, nonhierarchical organization. However, Steinfeld et al.
(1995) have examined the buyer-seller relationships between firms on a
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network, and concluded, based on case studies, that the use of an electronic
network between firms tends to lock out other firms. They present this as
evidence that networked businesses tend to promote hierarchical organizations
(such as corporations) instead of markets. In other words, doing commerce on
a network increases interdependence between existing partners, and has not
encouraged firms to seek new suppliers or buyers in an open trading market.
Such a trend is clearly observed when new firms have to invest in hardware
and software to participate in bidding and contracting. The open Internet,
however, lowers such investment requirements, and will facilitate a more
market-like organization among networked companies.
Legal Environment
The unique nature of the Internet brings it into uncharted legal and political
territory in regards to a number of different issues, among which copyright is
just one. Because the Internet is not constrained by political boundaries,
electronic commerce is not adequately defined by existing laws or regulated by
one government entity. For example, as commerce over the Internet increases,
city and state governments are seeking ways to collect and remit sales taxes on
Internet transactions (BusinessWeek, 1996). But a 1992 court case (Quill
Corp. vs. North Dakota) held that for a state to collect taxes on sales, the
vendor must have significant sales operations within the state. Because many
Internet operations have highly dispersed personnel, little inventory, and no
showrooms, at this time it is not clear whether states and local governments
have a legal right to collect taxes on their sales.
The issue regarding retail sales taxes in the electronic marketplace, while just
one of many, illustrates how the legal and economic systems must evolve to
accommodate the new electronic medium. Because authorities can control
points of sales through requirements and permits, sales taxes are a reasonable
method used to augment local revenues. But this practice becomes untenable
in a boundless marketplace. The same problem is foreseen with tariffs and
international trade. The question is whether governments should impose

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control measures such as permits, requirements, and regulations so that they
can extend their locus of control over Internet commerce, or they should give
special treatment to electronic commerce and look for other venues for tax.
Each choice will have a substantially different effect on the future
development of electronic commerce. A more detailed discussion of taxation
issues can be found in Chapter 11.
Internet Sales Tax Permit?
To open a business of any kind, one needs to obtain a sales tax
permit and register business names with counties in which one
intends to operate. Necessary permits must be obtained depending
on the type of product handled. Financial and accounting records
must be kept and sales taxes must be reported periodically.
To open an Internet business, however, one only needs to get an

Internet account through an ISP (Internet Service Provider), and
open up a web page announcing business. Although one can
register a domain name, a sort of store name, it is not required. In
fact, Internet domain names have been given out on a "first-come,
first-served" basis. Legal issues in terms of trademarks are just
beginning to be contested. And what are the procedures for
recording and reporting sales and accounting figures? How do
accounting firms audit electronic transaction records? For such
aspects of business, public policymaking, as well as private
entrepreneurial solutions, need to be explored.
The nature of Internet communication also compounds many legislative and
legal efforts going on at the national and international level to adapt to the new
electronic environment. For example, one contentious issue taken up in
Chapter 5 is how copyrights of content owners should be protected in the
digital age. The primary concern about copyrights is linked to the sellers' and
buyers' access to the same production technologies that enable mass
reproduction and mass distribution of any digital product without quality
degradation. Prohibiting or limiting the use of the technology is clearly not the
solution. Rather, every aspect of production, sales, and distribution has to be
analyzed and redefined before a proper and effective legal framework can be
created.
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The challenge is very real. Detecting pirate copies of books or sound
recordings is relatively easy compared to discerning digital copying and
distribution over an open network. Besides many difficulties in copyright
enforcement, there is substantial difficulty in defining what constitutes a
legitimate copy. Traditionally, copy is protected if a work is fixed in a
substantially permanent medium. Is a screen display or a CD-ROM cache
permanent enough to merit copyright control? And because viewing a file
on-screen involves transferring of the file, should all file browsing be regarded
as copyright infringement? How different is web browsing from browsing a
book in a bookstore? These and a long list of other questions remain to be
resolved.
For example, at the international level, differences in copyright laws across
countries and even between two international copyright conventions, the Berne
Convention and the UCC, must be reconciled. While illegal piracy may be
dealt with using trade sanctions authorized under General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and other trade agreements, the Internet simply
supercedes all political jurisdictions, making it harder to cope with through
traditional trade negotiations, which are often lengthy and ineffective. On
another note, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) raises the issue of maintaining linguistic and cultural diversity in the
face of dominant use of English as the Internet language. But by using a
different language, one community may end up isolating itself from a variety
of information that will negate many of the benefits of information exchange.
Although there is a definite void in terms of adequate legal protection in
electronic commerce, hasty legislation is not the answer. Take, for example,
the consequences of one attempted solution. The problem is that it is possible
for hackers to set up their computers to impersonate other sites receiving and
sending messages, while their correspondents are not aware of the true identity
of their partners. To prevent this kind of fraud, called spoofing, on the Internet,
a new Georgia law makes it a crime to falsely identify oneself or to direct
others to unintended sites. Poorly worded, the law may also prohibit any links
on a web page. While the zeal of public officials to use legislation to address
open network problems is understandable, any effort to apply legal control
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blindly to the digital medium is misguided unless law makers understand how
the Internet communication works and consider all the ramifications of simply
incriminating network activities.
Recent controversies over the public availability of highly uncrackable
encryption technology such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
(http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html) and the Communications Decency Act
(Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) for the Internet have shown
how difficult it is to impose control over the digital network. However, it is
prudent to remember that proactive laws are seldom effective when the
environment they intend to regulate is continuously evolving. In fact, they
often have detrimental effects on its development. The Internet and the
electronic marketplace have many strengths, but require understanding and
nurturing instead of control and regulation.
1.4.Current Issues in Electronic Commerce

Now that we have defined electronic commerce as a market and examined its
characteristics of the marketplace, you may be enjoying a sense that it is
smooth sailing from here to harnessing the enormous potential of this new
world. However, basic questions remain regarding how the commodity,
sellers, and buyers will actually come together in a market that still lacks many
essential features necessary for secure commercial transactions. While current
debates on electronic commerce issues focus on legal or technological aspects,
our goal in this section is to review and highlight the economic aspects of these
and other issues.
Contents and Quality
In any market, traditional or electronic, uncertainty regarding the quality of

products can lead to the collapse of that market. Although the Internet provides
a wide variety of services and is used by millions, there is still a noticeably
Page 36
wide gap between the number of commercial products and services that could
easily be digitized and those that are currently offered on the Internet. Some
see this as a sign of the reluctance of content owners to participate in electronic
commerce and a signal of a reduction in the overall quality of what is available
on the Internet. For physical products, consumers may prefer to inspect
products and actually try them out instead of looking at a picture or reading a
description. Lacking a proper means to verify quality, commercial
opportunities may be limited to a few whose quality consumers already know
about or can easily learn online. Online banking and travel services are two
examples for which consumers are already familiar with electronic processing
and purchasing. For others, online markets may not materialize at all.
Although copyright protection is an important legal issue, and one that is
doubtlessly connected with product quality, there is a more fundamental
reason drawn from economics that helps to explain why products of high
quality may not be offered on the Internet: uncertainty about product quality
stemming from asymmetric information. Quite simply, when consumers do not
have adequate information about product quality, their willingness to pay
depends on the expected level of quality. For example, if there is an equal
chance of getting a good product worth $100 or a bad product worth $50,
buyers are willing to pay, on average, $75. Being an average, consumers break
even in the long run by paying $75 for this product. To put it differently, $25
benefits the consumers who get a good product and evens out with $25 losses
by those who receive a bad product.
Consumers may be persuaded to pay more than $75 if sellers are able to
convince them that their products are indeed of high quality. Without such
information or guarantee, a seller cannot charge more than $75. If the cost of
producing a good product exceeds $75—the expected price in the
market—then a seller of a high-quality product will do better not to sell the
product. Further, if the number of bad products exceeds the number of good
products, consumers' willingness to pay diminishes as the
expected—average—level of quality decreases. If there are only bad products
in the market, the only possible market price will be $50. As high-quality
products withdraw from the market, this leaves the market with low-quality
goods, that is, lemons.

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The so-called lemons problem occurs in most markets when it is difficult to
know product quality prior to purchase (Akerlof, 1970), which is a prominent
aspect of electronic commerce for at least two reasons. The first is that digital
products are more than just a digitized version of paper-based products.
Instead, digital products incorporate the unique advantages of the electronic
medium. Newspapers, for example, are personalized, searchable, and updated
instantly. The value and quality of a digitized newspaper, then, cannot be
adequately estimated based solely on the experience and practice in
paper-based counterparts. Furthermore, when products are highly customized
and their contents vary greatly, assessing quality becomes increasingly
subjective and personal.
Another reason for heightened uncertainty—and increased potential for the
lemons problem to arise—is the diversity of producers. Unlike physical
products, digital products are produced and sold by virtually anyone on the
Internet. Through today's personal homepages and web servers running on
every personal computer in the future, every user will be a producer and a
potential seller as well. Even for physical products, the worldwide market will
provide consumers with a considerably greater number of vendor choices that
may not be as familiar as local sellers. Conventional means to convey product
quality, such as reputation and brand name, are less useful in this type of
market with a vast array of sellers who may be in the market only for a short
time. Relatively small overhead costs to enter the electronic marketplace will
certainly lower the barrier to entry and will increase the level of competition
and choice, but consumers face many difficulties in selecting reliable, suitable
vendors.
Will an exhaustive and technically useful digital catalog be enough to persuade
consumers to trust online vendors about the quality of their products?
Seller-provided product information is useful if the products in question are
search goods; to judge quality, one only needs a picture or a product
specification. For experience goods, which must be consumed to learn the
quality, no amount of information will suffice.
Page 38
One typical means of resolving the quality uncertainty in similar situations in
physical markets is through the use of a trusted third party. For example,
● A used-car buyer can take the car to a trusted mechanic for evaluation
● Consumer advocacy groups publish product evaluation reports
● Governments and industry groups also typically set standards for quality
and issue licenses to qualified producers in certain industries.
All these mechanisms depend on the neutrality and trustworthiness of the
parties who provide the supposedly objective information. The neutrality of
these parties is often in doubt, or otherwise their information is limited due to
various reasons—the lack of adequate funding, the vast number of products to
be evaluated, or the diversity in product specifications. In electronic
commerce, the number and diversity of digital products and their producers
may prove to be too costly to engage in complete and objective product
evaluations. An alternative is to rely on the market mechanism, in which an
intermediary reseller provides its customers with product information. An
efficient intermediary could economize costs in evaluating and guaranteeing
product quality. At the same time, the intermediary's need to maintain or
guarantee quality lies in its profit motive, not in its commitment to public
service. In Chapter 4, an evaluation of the role of intermediaries as a
mechanism to resolve quality uncertainty in a distributed network environment
is examined in more detail.
Copyrights versus Users Rights
While quality uncertainty is one reason why good quality products withdraw
from the market, inadequate copyright protection also discourages content
owners from offering their products. The surging trends merging computer and
communications technologies has vastly increased the amount of information
and entertainment resources shared over the network—the areas which most
often include copyrighted materials. Efforts to protect copyrights on the
Internet have evoked legal as well as emotional responses and have clearly
revealed the inadequacy of current copyright legislation. Without resolving
this issue, selling online may not be the future in distributing contents.
Page 39
Copyright and the Freedom of Speech
The case commonly referred to as "Church of Scientology vs. the Net" has
been at the center of copyright and censorship debates, and legal and net
attacks, and counter-attacks between the Church of Scientology (the Church)
and "netizens" who oppose any restriction on the use of the Internet. (See
Electronic Frontier Foundation archive at (http://www.eff.
org/pub/Censorship/CoS_v_the_Net/).) The case started in 1994 when a part of
the Church's Operating Thetan (OT) materials, considered by the Church to be
secret and copyrighted, appeared in the alt.religion.scientology UseNet
newsgroup via an anonymous mailer. OT materials are a major source of
revenue for the Church, which charges substantial amounts of money for its
members to view and study them. As the Church was unable to identify the
original anonymous mailer, it brought a copyright infringement suit against
one who reposted the same material on the newsgroup. As the Internet buzzed
about the incident, more participants in the newsgroup joined in related attacks
at the copyrighted materials and the Church itself. The Church not only sued
other users and the Internet service providers, it tried to shut down the
newsgroup and cancel messages posted to it. As the Church's effort expanded,
those concerned with censorship intensified their counter-efforts in protest
against the Church.
To date, the legal and nonlegal measures taken by the Church have not been
effective in protecting its documents and its reputation. However, the incident
serves as an illustrative example of how difficult it is to enforce copyright
control in cyberspace. The Church could prove that the materials had
economic value to them, but the alleged had no economic motives—no one
sold the material—and considered their actions to be within the boundaries
allowed by the fair use doctrine of copyright law. In contrast with pirate book
publishers, whose economic motives are easy to prove because they have loci
of operation and traceable accounts of sales and profits, public exchanges on
public networks are hard to track and even harder to control.

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Legal and Economic Considerations of Copyrights
The current debate on digital copyrights focuses on the ambiguities in legal

definitions and the technical means of control that must be modified to
accommodate digital products. For example, since copyright protection is
extended only to fixed physical expressions, not to the idea itself, copyright
enforcement is linked to the physical forms that are used to express these
ideas. But is a flickering image on a computer screen a "fixed expression" of
an idea protected by copyright law? If so, there will be two copies of a
document when a stored file is viewed on the screen, one on the screen and the
other in the hard drive. Is the user required to pay for two copies? Ambiguities
such as this have convinced most participants in the debate that the digital
medium and the transfer conduit of networked computers necessitate a
completely new approach to copyrights and other intellectual property rights.
Although the problems are well debated, what is still lacking for a solution is
the economic arguments as to why and how copyrights should be applied to
digital products and electronic commerce.
From an economics point of view, the new approach is based on market
analysis, which evaluates property rights of content owners as well as the
public's interest in protecting certain products. The term "public's interest"
does not cover extreme positions such as absolute free speech or the opinion
that ideas must be freely available, but economic aspects that are not so
apparent from legal analysis. For example, in the well-known Lotus vs.
Borland case, Borland argued that the user interface used by Lotus was not
copyrightable. The interface in question was the way Lotus 1-2-3 arranged its
command hierarchy for its menus. Borland copied the command structure so
that its users could use macros written for Lotus 1-2-3. The legal question was
whether the user interface was copyrightable or simply constituted a series of
commands as do buttons on a VCR remote control. The Supreme Court let
stand the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal's decision in favor of Borland in January,
1996 without written explanation.
In arguments, regarding protecting Lotus 1-2-3's command structure, many
economists focused on its network externalities and user switching costs.
Page 41
The availability of third-party macros written for 1-2-3 constitutes an added
benefit for its users. This kind of indirect advantage is a positive network
externality, or more correctly, a positive network effect. Also, when users
switch to a different product, they have to learn new features, such as
keystrokes, which is costly. Thus, to maximize network effects and to
minimize switching costs, users tend to stick with a popular software package.
If Borland were prohibited from using 1-2-3's user interface, Lotus would
enjoy extra market protection from indirect economic effects secondary to
Lotus's own product.
Whether user interfaces should be protected is still being argued. Regardless of
the ultimate decision, this case illustrates that market analysis in a copyright
infringement case involves much more detailed study on specific product
characteristics and the market. For digital products, copyright schemes based
on economic analysis may prove more valuable than legal and technical
solutions. Current copyright laws and enforcement methods have evolved in
the context of printing presses, and their offspring, such as photocopiers, and
the way consumers use printed copies. The scope of the law has also expanded
to cover new forms of intellectual products—books and manuscripts, musical
scores, paintings, photographs, sound recordings, movies, performance arts,
and architectural works. Digitized files and their distribution through computer
networks could be considered, as yet, another form of intellectual product to be
included. The effort to redefine what constitutes a reproduction and a
distribution on the Internet certainly harks back to the days of printing presses.
An alternative is to recognize the digital age as the second-coming of the
printing press, and to formulate a new framework which underscores the ways
consumers and markets operate in this so-called knowledge-based economy.
Chapter 5 presents an in-depth discussion of this topic.
Interactive Advertising and the Use of Consumer Information
One area of explosive growth and considerable skepticism is Internet

advertising and marketing. In adapting marketing and advertising strategies for
the Internet, the emphasis has typically been on the behavioral and cultural
Page 42
characteristics of Internet users and the radical difference in the
communication environment compared to traditional broadcasting media.
Current Internet marketing guidelines summarize the behavioral idiosyncrasies
of Internet dwellers in two broadly accepted traits:
● Consumers react vigorously, unlike TV and newspaper audiences, to
unwarranted messages. Even a rudimentary understanding of the
Internet culture makes it clear that active broadcasting of advertising
messages will not work.
● In the electronic marketplace, consumers come to the sellers. An
interactive advertisement works by providing these consumers with
relevant information on the sellers' web site.
● Implications of the above are that Internet advertising needs to be
two-way, interactive communications that offer some values to
consumers. Does this mean advertisers on the Internet lose their
traditional means to push their messages? While the debate regarding
push versus pull models of online advertising rages on, what is gaining
the support of both advertisers and consumers is actually a mixture of
the two.
Push or Pull Advertising
A push advertising actively seeks out audiences and sends unwanted messages,
a familiar sight in physical markets. On the Internet, however, a pull model
advises advertisers to passively receive consumers who are in search of
product information. For example, Internet marketers are strongly warned
against sending unsolicited emails to lists, newsgroups, and individuals.
Spammers, who disregard this common netiquette, are listed in the Blacklist of
Internet Advertisers (http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/). Although
the list is not exhaustive in any sense, group and individual efforts to warn
against spammers and fraudulent advertisers continue.
To counter the passive nature of waiting for visitors to patronize their web
sites, Internet advertisers rely on interactivity—the buzz word of Internet
marketing. Interactivity is the Internet's counterpart for sex and violence that
entice television viewers. But unlike advertising models based on broadcasting

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media, not only contents on web sites are eye-catching and jazzy, but also
Internet advertising uses a novel form of two-way communications in which
customer participation is encouraged. An active participation is desired in part
because it increases the chance that the viewer will remember the advertising
content. As a result, the model for web advertising and product delivery is no
longer one of push or pull. Instead, customers specify what products they
want, for example, pull, and sellers push these products to consumers
following prearranged agreements.
Measuring the Impact of Online Advertising
The actual impact of advertising is hard to track and quantify for both mass
media and the Internet, although interactive technology presents new
possibilities for the entire advertising industry. In the case of mass media, there
are companies that measure the size of the audience per commercial message,
for instance Nielson TV and radio ratings, and efforts are underway to further
evaluate the economic impacts of advertising by correlating advertising and an
increase in sales. But broadcast advertising is fundamentally inefficient
because of its redundancy. It sends messages regardless of whether people are
interested, receptive, or relevant to the product. In comparison, selecting an
audience and verifying the number of people who received a message is
relatively easy on the Internet. However, the advertiser still does not know
whether the receiver actually read the message or not.
Refined measures and methods are being proposed for the Internet. Proctor &
Gamble (http://www.pg.com), for example, limits payment for its ads on the
Yahoo! search engine (http://www.yahoo.com) to the number of people who
actually request more information by clicking on their advertisement rather
than paying based on the number of Yahoo! customers to whom its
advertisement is presented on their search pages. This is in contrast with the
traditional method of measuring viewer-ship, and payment—based on
"eyeballs," equivalent to the number of connections to Yahoo!, or the "hit
rate." As more and more sellers begin to doubt the effectiveness of broadcast
advertising on the Internet that simply flashes banner advertisements, many
advertiser-based services have to rely on different revenue sources, for
instance,
Page 44
subscription fees. As a result, there will be reduced outlets for broadcast-based
advertising in the future. An alternative is targeted advertising.
Targeted Advertising and Privacy
The essence of targeted advertising lies in the Internet's interactivity via

two-way communication. For example, when a web user types the keywords
"French wine," the response page displays not only the search results but also
advertising messages by wine sellers. Although advertisers may send mass
mails based on consumer profiles obtained through third-party information
sellers, web advertising allows a more integrated, real-time targeting, which is
then linked to market research, production, and sales efforts.
Interaction between advertisers and buyers brings up a highly sensitive issue in
Internet advertising, for example, the use of consumer information. Electronic
transactions leave a trail of information, which can be used to generate
powerful personal profiles for prospective consumers. Yahoo!, for example,
openly admits that the company is not in the business of selling a search
service but of selling consumer information collected by the web server that
monitors and records a wide range of information about its visitors. Consumer
surveys and market research has always been an intrinsic part of a successful
advertising campaign. Now, extensive data on consumers are being gathered
from various sources, like telephone records, credit card usage, and web
browsing. Computers can easily cross-reference this data to generate databases
for specific advertising purposes. This cross-referenced information about
users is sometimes called metainformation—metainformation originally meant
the information about information—and has become the most valuable
information generated by the Internet. As it becomes more common,
advertising and marketing based on consumer metainformation collected via
the net will become a contentious issue, which is discussed in Chapter 6.
The economic implications of the use and misuse of this consumer information
cannot be ignored. First, sellers are able to offer customized products instead
of one of average tastes. Also, in many cases, consumers are willing to reveal
their preferences to get better quality in the way of customized products.
Page 45
From another perspective, refined demand information can reduce waste, such
as over-production resulting from market uncertainty. The use of consumer
information in terms of product selection and pricing will be discussed in
Chapter 8.
Internet Intermediaries
Intermediaries play a far more important economic role in physical markets

than might at first be apparent. For example, retailers provide consumers with
access to goods produced by remote sellers. Beyond this distribution function,
however, they also act as insurers of product quality and diversity, and provide
product information. Even so, intermediaries are often perceived to add
unnecessary costs to consumers. An efficient market is defined as one that
reduces the number of intermediaries, or the number of intermediary steps
necessary for a market transaction.
It follows then that an efficient market such as the electronic market should do
without intermediaries, and instead, consumers should buy products directly
from producers. In the physical market, if someone living in Texas wants to
buy a product from a firm in California, the cost of flying to that store will be
prohibitive for most products. This is in fact a prime example of how
intermediaries such as wholesalers and a retailer in the customer's location in
Texas actually help to reduce transaction costs. However, it is true that one can
order some products via mail order, which reduces the number of
intermediaries and cuts transaction costs further. Similarly, the growth of a
global commerce network such as the Internet may further reduce the number
of intermediary steps necessary for trade. In this vein, some argue that the
Internet resembles a preindustrial market where sellers and buyers meet at one
place at the same time. When the network serves as a market, buyers and
sellers may exchange goods directly instead of through intermediaries
(Benjamin and Wigand, 1995), creating a more efficient market.
However, retailers perform functions other than distribution. When an
intermediary has superior experience, knowledge, and authority in evaluating
product quality, the need for its service will persist. Also, customers will incur

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increased costs if they have to deal with as many sellers as needed to purchase
goods. Thus, there will remain a need for intermediaries and brokers in
electronic commerce. Retail shops, for example, perform various functions
such as transporting and distributing goods, evaluating and displaying related
products, and providing their expertise in matching a certain good of a certain
quality with the need of a consumer. As these functions might not be provided
by one, or even most producers, there is a continuing need in the electronic
marketplace as well as in physical markets for an intermediary that increases
efficiency by reducing various types of transaction costs.
Intermediaries will come in all different sizes and shapes and serve different
functions in electronic commerce. The informational role of an intermediary is
discussed in Chapter 4 when the question of quality uncertainty is taken up.
Search intermediaries will take part in consumer searches for product
information (Chapter 7) and financial intermediaries will play a role in
investment payment efficiencies (Chapters 9 and 10). But a functioning market
needs other intermediary services as well, such as insurance, accounting
services, brokers, financial services, regulators, network service providers, and
so on. Even UseNet newsgroups depend on the services of various groups who
advise on group creation during the request for discussions (RFD) and call for
votes (CFV) stages, volunteer vote takers, administrators of news-servers,
anonymous remailers, and users, as well as self-appointed net patrollers. All
these services are necessary and are currently done on a voluntary basis.
However, they all hold the potential to become paid intermediaries.
Security and Privacy of Internet Transactions
Unsecured transmission on the Internet is often cited as the main deterrent for
a rapid growth of electronic commerce. Although much progress is being made
in terms of security, the net is still considered to pose a risk for commercial
transactions. Although the Internet's lack of security stems from the
fundamental design of the basic protocol suite (Bellovin, 1989), security
measures can be implemented at various levels of Internet communications.
Network level security secures the conduit, while encryption secures the
content
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traveling through the conduit. Security takes on added importance when we
look at the special case of financial payment mechanisms.
While payment security usually means protecting sensitive information from
eavesdropping and theft, a secure transaction has a broader set of
requirements, including nonrepudiation, authentication, integrity, and
confidentiality. Nonrepudiation means that the parties in a transaction cannot
deny it after the fact. Authentication refers to the ability to verify the identity
of persons involved in transactions, while integrity means that the data
transferred should not be modified in transit or in storage. Finally,
confidentiality refers to privacy, in other words, that the transaction is only
between participants. A strong form of privacy is anonymity, where the
identities of one or more of the participants is not known to the other parties of
the transaction.
Nonrepudiation and authentication are aspects that have not been explored
fully and require further developments in certification technologies and
services. As in notary services, a market mechanism for nonrepudiation and
authentication involves a trusted third party (Froomkin, 1997). The U.S. Postal
Service has recently identified its electronic commerce opportunities to be a
service provider as a trusted certification authority. Although discussion on
this topic usually entails the legal implications of certifying actions and
liabilities, it is another area where intermediaries play an important role in
electronic commerce.
Data integrity and confidentiality issues have been dramatically addressed by
advanced encryption and digital signature technologies. There is a large body
of literature on the use of these technologies, that typically invokes
constitutional rights to privacy and the protection of free speech. Our focus,
instead, is on the economic implications of integrity and confidentiality.
Integrity, for example, relates to the derivative right guaranteed by copyright
law. Also, maintaining the integrity of a digital document will be tantamount if
that document in question is a digital currency or a digital financial document.
The concern for confidentiality turns into an economic issue when
transactional data are used or sold by sellers for other purposes. Such issues
related to the use of consumer information are discussed in Chapter 8. The
Page 48
desire, as well as technologies, to conceal such information has resulted in
anonymous payment systems. The issues of transaction security and payment
mechanisms are explored in Chapter 10.
Pricing Strategies for Digital Products
Little has been written on product pricing in electronic commerce. Traditional

marginal-cost pricing is regarded as inappropriate for digital products, which
have almost zero marginal costs. On the other hand, the marginal cost of a
digital product may be substantial because of copyright payments, which will
apply to most digital products. Treating the cost of developing a first copy of a
digital product as fixed cost, the appropriate price based on marginal cost
pricing appears to be per-copy copyright payments. However, when a firm has
market power, which will be most likely if products are differentiated, digital
products may be priced based on a consumer's willingness to pay and the
pattern of usage rather than on the cost of production. In this kind of pricing
scheme, pricing strategies become a complex exercise in customization,
bundling, and unbundling of products. The following discussions on pricing
strategies are expanded upon in Chapter 8.
In most markets, firms have discretionary power over product pricing. This
will be even more prominent in electronic commerce due to product
differentiation. Consumers are often charged differently even for the same
physical product. For example, many services are priced differently for
children, students, or senior citizens. A motion picture is distributed first in
theaters, then to pay-cable channels, video sales, rental videos, and network
television. At each distribution channel, prices for the same motion picture are
differentiated based on consumers' eagerness to view it. Products are often
differentiated by quality with different prices not necessarily corresponding to
the quality level. In all these cases, the product prices are influenced more by
factors other than the basic cost of production. It can be expected that a similar
situation will hold true for electronic commerce. But which factors will
influence prices the most is still an open question.

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Electronic commerce is radically changing the way products are distributed.
Prices for electronic newspapers, for example, may differ from those for
printed newspapers. Should we expect products ordered through web pages to
be priced lower because the process seems equivalent to direct-from-factory
merchandising? For personalized digital products, the cost of production may
vary for each consumer. Cost differences warrant different prices, and the
nature of network computing may enable sellers to implement complex pricing
strategies, which have been impractical in physical markets.
Research into these and other issues related to product pricing in electronic
commerce is just emerging. Most attention has been paid to software pricing.
With the durability problem in digital products, research is focusing on
renting, licensing, and leasing strategies. But there are non-conventional
methods of price discrimination which will be prevalent in electronic
commerce and which will have peculiar economic effects. Deneckere and
McAfee (1996) show an example where a lower quality product may cost
more than a higher quality one, and both sellers and buyers are better off. An
example of price discrimination of this sort is commonly observed where some
functions of computer hardware or software are disabled for specific markets.
A variant version of renting and licensing is subscription-based pricing. An
initial cost of producing a database is large but the cost of extracting and
selling a portion is minimal. The price for a database, therefore, cannot be
based on the cost of production or the marginal cost of serving a customer. A
break-even price will depend on the total number of subscribers, who vary
widely in their usage. Thus, optimal pricing will reflect differential usage.
Such a nonlinear optimal pricing strategy has been developed for natural
monopoly industries such as electric utilities, natural gas, and
telecommunications. In a way, the digital product industry is similar to them
because of the relatively high proportion of fixed costs to variable costs. The
problem is how to measure individual usage and associate the usage to price.
Usage-based pricing has been discussed in terms of network infrastructure, but
its application to product or service pricing is still not clear. Some argue that
pricing based on bundling and
Page 50
subscription will entirely circumvent the problem of measuring usage and
individual valuations, although measuring usage is rather convenient on the
Internet. But a more efficient allocation can be achieved if consumers are
allowed to purchase unbundled products using micropayments. This and other
subjects regarding digital product pricing will be discussed in Chapter 8.
Online Taxation, Regulation, and Other Legal Issues
As the number of Internet users grows and many areas of commerce begin to
feel the effects of electronic commerce activities, legal and regulatory
environments for the electronic marketplace are increasingly scrutinized by the
media and the legislators in a growing number of areas including:
● Taxation for online sales
● Income taxes for worldwide online activities
● Anonymity and criminal activities
● Global framework to deal with copyright infringements and electronic

crimes
● Money laundering and online banking regulation
● Digital currency regulation and monetary policies
● Consumer protection in online transactions
● Consumer privacy measures for identifiable information
● Deregulatory policies in telecommunications and ISP services
● Anti-competitive behaviors in software and digital products
While many of these issues deserve an in-depth analysis in separate volumes,

their legal aspects are discussed in Chapter 11, while we examine those related
to copyrights (Chapter 5), consumer information (Chapter 8), digital currency
and monetary policies (Chapter 10 in section 2).
Of particular importance to today's growing online commerce is to have a
uniform and global commercial environment. If we were to treat online
commerce simply as an extension of physical markets, taxing online sales of
Page 51
physical products would be relatively straightforward except the fact that the
taxing jurisdiction is often difficult to establish for the sellers, who may be
located anywhere in the world. Digital contents distributed online, on the other
hand, may be taxed as a sale or a royalty income depending on how we define
the product or service—as a sellable item or a renting and leasing of a
copyrighted material. If each taxing jurisdiction applies a different definition,
an online seller may be subject to a long-term uncertainty or even to a double
taxation. The globalized online market highlights the need to cooperate among
governments to streamline different commercial laws and regulations prevalent
in physical markets.
For many issues listed above, encryption and certification services play an
important role in establishing digital identity, preventing money laundering
and anonymous crimes, digital currency and consumer privacy. Not
surprisingly, the security and reliability of online commerce also depends on
how these services evolve and are accepted, not only by businesses and
consumers, but also by international governments. For digital product sellers,
encryption technologies are critical in maintaining control over their contents.
These technologies and certification authorities, who are intermediaries, are
discussed in Chapter 9.
1.5.Summary
The development of the Internet represents a fundamental change in networked
communication. Commercial enterprises on the Internet and the
next-generation networks must be adapted to the new environment of open,
distributed, peer-to-peer communication. At the same time, because of its
capability to use various file formats and support all kinds of communications
activities and its growing reach, the Internet will subsume many aspects of
business activities and organization. Already, electronic commerce has
expanded to include digital, as well as physical products, and informational, as
Page 52
well as noninformational products. More importantly, as business processes
and noncommercial activities themselves are digitized, new products and
intermediary opportunities are springing up. Electronic commerce will change
not only the way firms do business but will also transform intra- and interfirm
organizations, and in the process, the economics of the market. Understanding
the Internet in all its ramifications will be critical to developing proper
business strategies and seizing new opportunities that the Internet will
generate. At the same time, policy-makers and legislators need to broaden their
understanding of the nature of electronic commerce in order to make it a viable
economic sector by setting up proper policies and legislation.
Snapshots have also been provided of major issues and attempts to show why
they are of relevance and concern to the world of electronic commerce have
been explained. Subsequent chapters will add color and depth to each of these
topics, always stressing the economic perspective. Free speech versus absolute
author rights will not be explored further. Instead, emphasis on the need for a
market analysis of copyrights is given. Similarly, this book will refrain from
fueling the security concerns of potential commercial uses of the Internet,
which are no more severe than those posed by traditional media. Rather, we
explore the economic issues of who will control the revealed consumer
information and the payment systems.

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References
Akerlof, G., 1970. "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the
Market Mechanism." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84: 488_500.
Anderson, C., 1995. "The Accidental Superhighway." The Economist. July 1,
1995. Available at http://www.economist.com/surveys/internet/intro.html.
Bellovin, S.M. 1989. " Security Problems in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite."
Comput. Commun. Review, 19(2): 32_48.
Benjamin R., and R. Wigand, 1995. "Electronic Markets and Virtual Value
Chains on the Information Highway." Sloan Management Review. Winter:
62_72.
Bhimani, A., 1996. "Securing the Commercial Internet." Communications of
the ACM, June 1996, 39(6): 29_35.
Borenstein, N.S., et al., 1996. "Perils and Pitfalls of Practical
Cybercommerce." Communications of the ACM, June 1996, 39(6): 36_44.
BusinessWeek, 1996. "New Tolls on the Info Highway?" Feb. 12, 1996.
Chellappa, R., A. Barua and A.B. Whinston, 1997. "Intranets: Looking
Beyond Internal Corporate Web Servers" In R. Kalakota and A.B. Whinston,
eds., Readings in Electronic Commerce, pp. 311_321. Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley.
Deneckere, R., and R.P. McAfee, 1996. "Damaged Goods." Journal of
Economics and Management Strategy, 5(2): 149_174.
Froomkin, A.M., 1997. "The Essential Role of Trusted Third Parties in
Electronic Commerce." In Readings in Electronic Commerce, Chapter 6, pp.
119_176. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Longman, Inc.
Page 54
Hinden, R.M., 1996. "IP Next Generation: Overview." Communications of the
ACM, June 1996, 39(6): 61_71.
Radosevich, L., 1996. "The Once and Future EDI." CIO (http://www.cio.com),
December 15, 1996/January 1, 1997, pp. 67_77.
Steinfeld, C., R. Kraut, and A. Plummer, 1995. "The Impact of
Interorganizational Networks on Buyer-Seller Relationships." Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC), vol.1, No. 3. Available at
http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/vol1/issue3/steinfld.html.
Suggested Readings and Notes

History of the Internet
D. Lynch and M. Rose, 1993. Internet System Handbook. Reading, Mass.:

Addison-Wesley.
See also MacKie-Mason, J.K., and H.R. Varian, 1994, "Economics FAQs
about the Internet.," Journal of Economic Perspective, 8(3): 75_96.
Firms and Markets
There are various ways to define a firm. Economic definitions are mainly
concerned with potential gains in efficiency, for example reduction in
production or transactions costs.
In "The Nature of the Firm." Economica, 4:386_405 (1937), R. Coase views
the firm as a means to economize transaction costs. (Reprinted in Readings in
Price Theory, G. Stigler and K. Boulding, eds., 1952. Homewood, Ill:
Page 55
Irwin.) Depending on which minimizes transaction costs, a market-like
organization or a centralized firm is preferred. O. Williamson further
elaborated the concept of transaction costs in terms of the uncertainty in
long-term relationships such as future switching costs or investments in his
Markets and Hierachies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications. (New York: Free
Press) in 1975.
A concise summary on the role of a firm in a market is found in Jean
Tirole'sThe Theory of Industrial Organization, 1989, pp. 15_60. Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Phyllis K. Sokol, 1995. From EDI to Electronic Commerce: A Business

Initiative. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. Sokol's view of electronic commerce
is limited to an "open-EDI," which means a more flexible business-to-business
EDI. Nevertheless, it contains good information about the traditional EDI.
A detailed discussion on EDI and electronic commerce can be found in
Kalakota, R., and A.B. Whinston, 1996, Frontiers of Electronic Commerce,
Chapters 9 and 10, Addison-Wesley.
In additiona to Radosevich (1996) cited in the reference, see also a short article
by Davis, J., and M. Parsons, "EDI Vendors Adjust Strategies in Face of
Growing Internet," Infoworld, December 25, 1995.
Internet Resources
Implications of Digital Process
A wide range of thought-provoking articles regarding the impacts of the digital

process are available, appropriately enough, online.
Page 56
George Gilder is the author of Life After Television, 1992, New York, W. W.
Norton & Company, and discusses the effects of digital technologies on a
variety of social and economic spheres. Some of his articles are available at
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~gaj1/ggindex.html.
Nicholas Negroponte is the author of being digital, 1996, New York, Alfred A.
Knopf, whose introduction and excerpts are available at
http://www.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdintro.htm.
Jeffrey Rayport and John Sviokla teach Managing in the Marketspace at

Harvard Business School. The "marketspace" is where business is conducted
via information-based products, services or markets. Their course material is
available at http://www.hbs.edu/smig/marketspace.
The Internet Society (ISOC)
To contact ISOC, use email: [email protected]. ISOC holds annual INET

conference and publishes "Internet Society News." For more information, visit
ISOC web site at http://info.isoc.org/index.html.
Related web sites for IETF: http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/.

Related web sites for IAB: http://www.iab.org/iab/.
Statistics and Surveys on Internet Usage
Nua Internet Survey: An extensive list of Internet survey companies and sites
can be found at Nua's "Internet Survey Companies and Consultancies" page:
http://www.nua.ie/choice/Surveys/SurveyLinks.html.
Nua also sends out monthly updates via email. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:
[email protected] with the word "subscribe" in the body of the message.
The 1996 year-end review issue is available at
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/1996review.html.
Page 57
GVU Web Survey:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys
O'Reilly & Associates/Trish Information Services:
http://www.ora.com/gnn/bus/ora/survey/index.html
Church of Scientology v. the Net:
Alison Frankel, 1996. "Making Law, Making Enemies." An article appeared in
The American Lawyer, March, 1996, available at:
http://www.counsel.com/spotlight/scient.html.
Ron Newman's Scientology page:
http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html
Lotus Development Corporation v. Borland International, Inc.
Lotus vs. Borland resources at Berkeley HTLJ:
http://server.berkeley.edu/HTLJ/lvb/lvbindex.html
Economics professors' amicus brief in support of Borland:

http://www.SoftwareIndustry.og/issues/docs-htm/brf-econ.html
Page 58

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CHAPTER 2
Characteristics of Digital Products

and Processes
As the Internet progresses beyond merely being an efficient communications
medium and truly expands the opportunity for trading goods, the very
def-inition and basic characteristics of products will change in this electronic
marketplace. Information is commonly thought of as the new commodity for
electronic commerce. Information, which is often loosely defined to include
software and so-called "edutainment" products as well as other
knowledge-based products that can be digitized and delivered via networks,
has received the most attention in the public press. However, information, even
in its broadest sense, is far from the only product that can be digitized. Many
physical products can be made "smart" by adding an electronic interface to
monitor and control their functions, for example, smart cars and smart
appliances, which become hybrid digital products. Other examples are
electronic currencies and various forms of financial instruments and securities.
Even market processes are being digitized. For example, instead of driving to
stores, consumers visit web stores. Messages containing price quotes and
orders sent over the Internet can, indeed, be considered to be digital products
which perform the same functions as advertising and ordering in physical
markets.
Page 60
In light of this far broader scope of possibilities, in this chapter, properties and
characteristics of digital products are defined. Various types of digital products
in terms of usage and valuation are discussed. Next, an examination of three
physical characteristics of digital products that distinguish them from their
non-digital counterparts and that define the unique opportunities (and
challenges) of electronic commerce is given. Finally, a new taxonomy of
digital product types based on user-product interactions is presented. This
taxonomy will facilitate production and marketing decisions for the sellers, as
will become apparent throughout our analyses in later chapters.
2.1.What Are Digital Products?

Even a few random examples illustrate that virtually any product can be sold
electronically using the Internet as an advanced communications medium for
marketing and advertising, purchasing, and payments. Large corporations to
family-owned and neighborhood shops have set up online storefronts selling
everything from flowers (Virtual Flowers (http://www.virtualflowers.com/)) to
salsa (Bueno Foods (http://www.buenofoods.com/)). In fact, a full range of
easy-to-use software has been available for some time through vendors like
Open Market (http://www.openmarket.com/) that help businesses to set up an
electronic shop. Electronic shopping can offer more than just convenient
ordering. For example, when shopping groceries online through Peapod
(http://www.peapod.com), shown in figure 2.1, you can search, compare,
substitute, sort, and categorize your purchases using information on brands,
prices, nutritional contents, and size. Peapod takes advantage of the
computational power of the electronic marketplace to offer its customers
convenience as well as personalized, planned, economic shopping. Once a
customer's product choices are recorded and analyzed over a period of time,
online shopping services can offer inventory and automated refill
recommendations, as well as targeted advertisements and promotions. Such an
integrated shopping experience is indeed a digital service made possible in the
electronic marketplace.
Page 61
Figure 2.1 Peapod Homepage (http://www.peapod.com/)

Although selling physical products on the Internet is the main goal of Peapod
and many online businesses, their process innovations are at the core of
electronic commerce. For businesses selling physical products online, their
focus has been on improving the efficiency of business transactions or on
enhancing their services to improve market share, but innovative thinking can
transform many physical products and processes into digital products.
Information is a primary example of a digital product, for example
knowledge-based goods that can be digitized and transferred over a digital
network. Information goods include a wide range of traditionally paper-based
products such as books, magazines, newspapers, journals, photographs, maps,
and other graphics. Most of these products are first produced in digital format
and then printed on paper. Some information products such as databases,
computer software, and computer games are distributed and used in digital
format. Since video and audio signals can now be digitized, multimedia
products, such as movies, television programs, and sound recordings can be
combined with information products or sold separately as entertainment
products. Clearly, these are all transparent examples of products that exist as
physical products but that can easily be digitized for the electronic
marketplace.
Page 62
We can, however, take this process one step further. Anything that one can
send and receive over the Internet has the potential to be a digital product. Just
think of all the things you can send in an email message—letters and
postcards, news, instructions, credit card information, product inquiries, and so
on. Paper-based products of all kinds can become digital products by scanning
or by changing, conceptually, the way we use those products. For example,
airline, concert or baseball tickets need not be printed on paper. Instead, a
ticket—or the authorization for entry—can be assigned, transferred, and stored
digitally in a person's ID card. To make a reservation, one can log on to a web
site, and make payments digitally. The ticket is then downloaded into the
customer's storing device, which is scanned when boarding an airplane or
entering a sports venue.
Similarly, business and government forms that we fill out every day can be
digitized in their entirety. Instead of simply viewing information about a
government service on web pages, you could easily fill out a request form for
public assistance and receive, for example, welfare payments deposited
digitally on an electronic card or hard drive. Tax returns may be disbursed
electronically, completely digitizing the whole process—maintaining expense
records, calculating tax liabilities, submitting electronic filing, and paying
taxes or getting refunds. Some non-paper objects can also be digitized.
Museums routinely collect, describe, and catalog their collection using
databases, photographs, and sounds. Virtual museums could digitize these
materials and offer them on the Internet, reaching a far larger population (see
Internet Resources at the end of this chapter for an example). When art objects
themselves are digital pictures and photographs, museums may be more virtual
than physical, and the commerce of such objects includes the right to digitize
them, and thus the ability to control the content of the Internet for which
Microsoft and other companies are prepared to pay a large sum of money.
Some products or services do not have a corresponding physical form but exist
as a knowledge base or a process. This does not mean they cannot be turned
into digital products. Take, for example, a salesperson in a clothing store who
has considerable expertise and knowledge of fabrics, sizes, and

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fashion acquired through years of training and experience. This valuable
knowledge base could be digitized into a file or a program and made available
to customers.
Similarly, any process involving multiple human interactions and
communications can be organized as a digital process or an electronic market.
For example, a news clipping service searches newspapers and magazines
every day to locate and collect articles for a client based on specified
preferences. A computer program could do the same information filtering of
digitized news articles. Auctions for virtually all products could be organized
as electronic markets where auction items are viewed online, and bids and
payments are taken electronically. Christie's (http://
www.specialcar.com/christies) publishes its auction catalog online, but it may
well have to adapt its auctioning process itself to respond to its electronic
competitors in the future. The government and corporations may also use
electronic markets to send out requests for proposals. They may also receive
and evaluate them in digital form, not only improving efficiency but expanding
the number of participants. If a TV or radio station conducts a viewer response
session using phones, faxes, or letters, a few hundred responses may strain its
human and material resources. Conducted on a web page, it can easily
accommodate tens of thousands of responses, analyze them and respond in
real-time. Innovative digitizing may also change the way we woo. Although
some occasions may demand real flowers, a virtual flower (a graphic file of a
flower) is an example of digitizing a physical product whose main purpose is
symbolic. A flower sent over the network could embody the gesture of
greeting, consolation, affection, or any other emotion.
The list of digital products is bounded only by human imagination. Still, they
share a number of common traits. Besides the apparent physical quality of
being a stream of bits, they have no physical bounds in production and use.
They can, however, be grouped in the three broad categories shown in table
2.1. As concert tickets demonstrate, many products are simply a token or a
symbol whose physical form is not an essential requirement. Paper money is
another example of a product which needs not necessarily be printed on paper.
It is merely a symbol, in fact, a concept of value that can be digitized.
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Table 2.1 Examples of Digital Products
1. Information and entertainment products:
❍ Paper-based information products: newspapers, magazines,
journals, books
❍ Product information: product specifications, user manuals, sales
training manuals
❍ Graphics: photographs, postcards, calendars, maps, posters
❍ Audio: music recordings, speeches
❍ Video: movies, television programs
2. Symbols, tokens and concepts:

❍ Tickets and reservations: airline, hotels, concerts, sport events
❍ Financial instruments: checks, electronic currencies, credit cards,

securities
3. Processes and services:
❍ Government services: forms, welfare payments
❍ Electronic messaging: letters, faxes, telephone calls
❍ Business value creation processes: ordering, bookkeeping,

inventorying, contracting
❍ Auctions and electronic market
❍ Remote education, telemedicine, and other interactive services
❍ Cybercafés and interactive entertainment
2.2.Characteristics of Information Products

In the electronic marketplace of today, digital goods consist primarily of
information products. An information or knowledge good is a peculiar kind of
commodity. It needs no physical presence and the same idea or information
can be conveyed in many ways. As the virtual cyberspace exists in the minds
of the users, the idea or information—as the product of the mind—is said to be
the native dweller of the cyberspace. Its economic significance, however,
should be analyzed as a consumable commodity for which a market is
organized and a price is determined based on its usefulness. In this section,
some
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economic aspects of information products in terms of their usage by
con-sumers is highlighted. These aspects apply to both digital and non-digital
information products.
Dependence on Individual Preference

As conceptual embodiments of human ideas, knowledge, and intelligence,
information products do not have physical form or structure that can be
physically consumed. So information products are not "consumable" goods in
a conventional sense. What is being "consumed" is the idea represented by the
information and the use to which the information is put—something that varies
greatly among consumers. Although the demand for any good varies according
to the heterogeneity inherent in consumer tastes, the demand for information is
likely to be more variable than that for other products. The main reason for the
difference is that knowledge or information has many uses that often cross the
boundary of established product categories. Consequently, information product
sellers need to rely more on the signals consumers send in order to group
consumers according to preferences. As a result, product customization and
discriminatory pricing based on consumer types or other identifiable
information become essential for digital products because their uses and values
are relatively heterogeneous. With differentiated products, pricing strategies
will be based on consumers' valuations or their marginal willingness to pay
rather than on the marginal costs of production.
Transitory or Cumulative Utility
Many information products are time-dependent. For example, weather

information is used to forecast an output level of crops. For this year's crops,
last year's weather information has no relevancy as long as we assume that the
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weather conditions in each year are determined by a random process (that is,
we discount the possibility to forecast this year's weather based on last year's).
In this sense, some information, like time-dependent, outdated, or outmoded
information, may be transitory and perishable. Yesterday's weather
information or news is no longer needed except for archiving and referencing
purposes. But, archiving and referencing of transitory information has value in
its own right. This means that the utility of information is really cumulative. A
portion of any information file can be recycled and reused to produce different
products. In contrast to most other types of products, even "consumed" goods
can have value for information products.
Interestingly enough, not only the consumption, but the creation of
information is also a cumulative, and often collaborative, process. John Perry
Barlow (1993) has argued that "information is conveyed by propagation, not
distribution." His point is to emphasize that information propagates like a plant
and that both, transferer and transferee, have the same information. Often,
information evolves as it is transferred through accumulation, modification,
addition, and improvement. The process of schooling and learning begins with
reading texts of accumulated knowledge and continues with improvements
made by successive generations. In an age of digital products, changes can be
made at an exponential rate. Due to this continuous, cumulative process of
creation, given an information product, delineating and protecting a author's
rights is no simple matter. Whether a work is copyrightable will depend on a
close examination of all legal requirements, which will be discussed in Chapter
5. It suffices to say that cumulative consumption and production of digital
products significantly complicates product pricing strategies.
Externalities of Information Products
Externalities are economic consequences that are not fully accounted for by
the price or market system. These could be either unaccounted benefits or
harmful effects. Automobiles pollute the air but its cost on environment is not
reflected in the price of the automobile—an example of a negative externality.
If your

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neighbor's tree gives you shade, it is a positive externality for you. A new
agricultural technique—the use of fallows in the Middle Ages, developed by
one, has benefited all other farmers. The use of the new technique by others
does not prevent the inventor from using it on his land. Therefore, the
technique has a positive externality.
Many products have network externalities, which means that the value of a
product increases as more people use it. Network externality is one example of
a positive externality. The benefit of network externality may come directly
from the increasing number of users, as in the case of the telephone. The value
of the telephone is low if few people have a telephone, but much higher if you
can reach almost anyone. Congestion is a negative externality that can offset
positive network externalities. You benefit if many people have a telephone,
but are hurt if they use it so much that you get a frequent busy signal. Another
example of a network externality is the software industry, where more
companies develop programs for users of a popular operating system, for
instance Windows, than for less popular operating systems. Other digital
products have network externalities. For example, some computer games are
more enjoyable when there are more people to play with. A communications
network such as email or newsgroup messaging clearly enjoys network
externality similar to the telephone as well as negative externalities, such as
congestion.
Sharing of information, computer software, and other digital products is often
encouraged by the fact that the gains from sharing are substantial due to
network externalities and often exceed the potential cost of sharing if caught
and levied copyright infringement fines. When information products have
network externalities, the control over reproduction and sharing has been the
primary objective of copyright protection. Copyright control has been effective
as long as infringers are easily located. Copies of books and audio tapes, for
example, are usually pirated by those who have access to mass production
facilities. As the number of potential pirates is limited and the investment
necessary for such an operation is relatively high, most serious copyright
infringement by pirates has been by overseas publishers operating beyond the
reach of territorial copyright enforcement. However, digital products are
highly vulnerable to copying by consumers who have the very same
technology as the
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producers. The stakes are raised even higher when we consider the possibility
of pirate copies of digital currencies and electronic financial instruments.
Appropriate technologies and effective legal means must clearly be established
to adapt to this new environment, the topic of Chapter 5. A more proactive
strategy, however, can be found in the very nature of digital products. Some
information is inherently more valuable if fewer people have it. In these cases,
the information has a harmful, or negative, externality if someone else has the
same information. Although a basic tenet of economics observation holds that
the value of a good is higher if it is more scarce, in the case of information, the
opposite is often true due to network externality. Nevertheless, there are
numerous instances where exclusive information is more valuable because its
exclusivity renders the owner benefits. A primary example would be market
information that can be used for investment or speculative purposes. The
profitability of insider trading, although illegal, depends on the exclusivity of
the information.
For digital products with negative externalities, it is not easy to guarantee
maximum value to a buyer. Value assurance is comparatively easy in the case
of physical products. If one owns an item, it is physically impossible for others
to own the same object at the same time, and the fewer similar items that exist,
the higher the value of each. In a digital world, however, products can be
reproduced and redistributed at will and the exclusivity of information
products is not due to physical impossibility. Rather, exclusivity is artificially
imposed through control of ownership. Hoarding a physical product to create
an artificial scarity and to corner a market may be illegal, but there is no such
constraint placed on hoarding an idea. Preferably, if sellers want to guarantee
the value of information to their customers, information should be hoarded, or
its access be limited. In terms of copyright protection, information sharing by
consumers is never a problem for a seller when there is negative externality
since sharing would mean lowering its value. However, sellers of information
products need to provide stronger evidence of their guarantee or
trustworthiness to customers than do sellers of non-digital products.
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Intrinsic Values of Digital Products
Exclusivity in production can be just as valuable as exclusivity in

consumption. This is akin to the reputation built by high-quality good
producers of physical goods. When many versions of information, software,
news analysis, or commentary are available, exclusivity depends on the
originality and creativity of producers. An exclusive news coverage or carriage
of a syndicated column distinguishes one newspaper from another. In the
world market for digital products, it will be the individuality or point of view
of the authors, and the relevancy to the customers' needs that give one
producer an edge over the other. By producing unique and customized
products (exclusive products) sellers will be able to compete successfully
regardless of size.
As an intermediary distributing products of many producers, the exclusivity or
uniqueness also applies to the selection or bundling of these products. For
example, retail outlets in physical markets offer a distinctive selection that
attracts targeted customers, just as a magazine or a newspaper distinguishes
itself from the rest through the selection of particular articles and features.
Implementing such a unique selection or a "point of view" becomes easier
because of the physical nature of digital products, especially their
transmutability, which is discussed in the next section.
2.3.The Physical Nature of Digital Products

Whereas the nature and use of information discussed previously applies to
both digital and non-digital forms of knowledge-based products, there are
some characteristics of digital products that are fundamental or unique to the
medium. Because there are concerns over commercial aspects of delivery and
transmission over digital networks, here are three such fundamental and
unique features: indestructibility, transmutability (easy to modify), and

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reproducibility. Some non-digital products share these characteristics, but only
to a limited degree. For example, pictures can last for many decades with
proper care; parts of a song can be copied and changed; and whole books can
be photocopied. Despite these similarities, a digital file is the first medium of
expression that takes all these characteristics to an infinite degree of
perfection.
Indestructibility
Once created, a digital product maintains its form and quality ad infinitum
because of the lack of normal wear and tear. While some durable goods such
as automobiles or buildings may have a long life, they still suffer from usage,
and initial quality differences are further accentuated by consumer usage
behaviors. But the quality of a digital product does not degrade no matter how
long or how often it is used. Therefore, no distinction can be made between
durable and non-durable goods in the case of digital products. In other words,
for most purposes, a product sold by a producer is equivalent to one offered in
the second-hand market. This alone has significant ramifications on the
market.
Like any durable good, a producer of a digital product competes with its own
past sales since consumers purchase a digital product, at most, once during the
product's life. As a result, the producer is often forced to charge a very
competitive price—the lowest possible price—for its product even when it has
no competitor. Suppose that Alice sells a complete database of Medieval
English names. As the list is complete and no new names can be added, the
database is most durable. Suppose that those with English heritage are willing
to pay $100 for such a database, while non-English persons will pay only $10.
On the first market day, Alice can maximize her profit by selling only to
English descendants at $100 each. After all the sales are made, if Alice wants
to sell more she must lower the price to $10 because that is all the potential
buyers are willing to pay. However, if Alice lowers the price to $10 on the
second day, consumers who know the market demand could have predicted the
price change. Knowing that price will be lowered on the second day, no buyers
will pay the initial high price. Therefore, Alice can only price her product at
$10 at any time.
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This peculiar market behavior is due to the shrinking market size as the
durable good producer makes sales. The loss of market power for durable
goods is known as the Coase conjecture and affects all digital product sellers
(Coase, 1972). Several measures are available to avoid lowering prices. For
example, Alice may announce that she will not lower her price below $100 on
the first day, or issue a buy-back guarantee if the price is lowered, but their
effectiveness depends on her credibility (Bulow, 1982). Alternatively, she may
sell to the same number of customers in each market period with different, or
`updated' products. That is, a supposedly `complete' database is continuously
updated based on `newly found' data—a strategy of planned obsolescence.
Frequent updating and licensing are two popular strategies of durable good
sellers having a significant impact on digital product marketing and pricing.
Frequent updates make old versions of software obsolete, thereby enabling the
seller to continue to sell durable goods to the same buyers. While updated
versions may be used to introduce new and more efficient features, the
underlying profit motive in updates often increases inefficiency. Software
manufacturers often make changes in the user interface, to differentiate new
products sufficiently from old ones, so that users need to relearn the software,
resulting in waste. And in some cases, it is not clear whether new versions are
of superior quality to old ones. After many years of updates, some computer
programs have become exaggerated in size and complicated with unnecessary
and useless features.
Licensing is another way to continue to sell. By renting instead of selling a
durable good, consumers are charged for the usage in each period, whereby the
market for the seller continues to exist. When renting, consumers are not
affected by their expectations about the future sales and prices, and the firm
has no incentive to produce any additional units or to lower prices in the
future. Thus, licensing software will achieve the same goal in maximizing
profit as the practice of frequent updating.
The indestructibility of digital products is another factor why digital product
sellers would prefer licensing or leasing to direct sales. The life of a digital
product is not only comparably longer than that of most durable goods,
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but it also has to compete with "used" products that are indistinguishable from
new products. When products in second-hand markets resemble the products
in new product markets in every aspect, revenue protection for producers will
depend on how successfully they can discourage second-hand sales, especially
when the life of a product is longer than the product's usefulness to each
consumer. Consequently, certain products like books and musical CDs may
need special protection against reselling. Despite the obvious rationale from
the producers' perspective, it is still uncertain whether second-hand markets
can be legally prohibited.
Transmutability
A paradox to the above claim is that the content of digital products can be
changed instantly. They are extremely customizable and, indeed, seem to be
changing constantly. Changes, whether accidental, intended, or fraudulent, can
be irreversible. Hence, by the nature of digital products, producers lose some
control over the integrity of their products. Although most free documents on
the Internet state that they allow distribution only for unmodified copies, in a
world composed of ones and zeros, this is a stipulation that is virtually
impossible to enforce. This does not prevent producers from employing a wide
variety of mechanisms in their attempts to quail this behavior. Certain
technologies, for example, prevent easy modification. For example, a
document such as a PDF file can be viewed or printed with Adobe's Acrobat
Reader, but users cannot save the file in digital format. Therefore, any casual
digital modification will be prevented although unlimited printing is allowed.
Acrobat Reader is platform independent and used to disseminate technical
papers that contain graphics and equations. Despite these advantages, the
program is extremely large for its limited function and has spread very slowly.
While it is difficult to control content integrity at the user level once a digital
file is downloaded, there are mechanisms that can verify whether a document
has been modified. Encryption technologies (Data Encryption Standard and
RSA—public key encryption scheme patented by RSA Data

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Security, Inc. (http://www.rsa.com)) provide privacy and protection against
modification, but only in transmission. Other authentication technologies have
been developed primarily for checking authenticity or whether a document's
content has been altered. These technologies are useful if buyers are concerned
about corrupted copies but will not provide sellers with effective control
against unauthorized modifications or copies.
The strategic implication of transmutability is that rather than trying to protect
content integrity, producers need to differentiate their products by customizing
and updating, and by selling them as interactive services, not as standard
shrink-wrapped products. This product differentiation is not only a possibility
but should be the overall business strategy adopted by companies producing
digital products. Component texts, graphics, audios, and videos, or an overall
look and format cannot be adequately protected. On the other hand, consumer
updates can be a natural process in the evolution of information and digital
products increasing the value of unmodified new products. This is underscored
by the third and final attribute of digital products—reproducibility.
Reproducibility
The beauty and the bone of all digital products is that they can be reproduced,
stored, and transferred at ease. This means, quite simply, that after the initial
fixed investment cost, the marginal cost of production is almost zero.
However, if the producer cannot appropriate even the fixed cost from the
market, product quality may be lowered, or the product may disappear
altogether. Given a set market price, the level of fixed costs determines the
minimum number of sales or market share needed to break even.
Consequently, advocates for intellectual property rights have centered on
preventing improper duplication and reselling of digital products. Whether
reproduction can be prevented via technology remains to be seen, but there is
great skepticism that this can be achieved. Rather, producers must strive to
make reproduction less valuable or irrelevant by continuously changing and
improving their products.
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For an obvious reason, the marginal cost of a digital product is assumed to be
zero. In terms of production, or reproduction, costs, this assertion would be
reasonable enough. However, the copyright payment would be applied to each
copy or reproduction, and a non-zero, per-unit cost is added. Once we include
such variable costs in the total production costs, digital products no longer
have zero marginal costs. Theoretical conclusions of some pricing models
critically depend on the assumption regarding marginal costs because they play
an important role in economic analyses. In Chapter 8, pricing strategies for
digital products are investigated. Here, we emphasize that, although digital
products may be reproduced at a minimum or no additional cost, this in no
way implies that their marginal costs will be zero.
Physical Nature and Economic Issues
The unique characteristics of digital products are all related in different ways
to the key issues in electronic commerce. The indestructibility raises the
concern regarding the effects of durability on market shares as well as the
product choices which producers of durable products must employ to counter
these effects. The first sales doctrine—allowing buyers to resell or lend
purchased products—may destroy the market completely unless an
information seller, for example, can restrict its customers from reselling.
On the other hand, the transmutability of digital products lends itself to
product differentiation and customization, perhaps to a much heightened
degree than any other physical products. Due to more flexible production
technologies, consumers are increasingly enjoying products which match their
tastes far better than mass-produced products that cater to average tastes. In
electronic commerce, each consumer would be able to purchase a product
based on his or her individual preference. The transmutability raises the whole
issue of customized products, individualized pricing, and the proper use of
consumer-revealed information.
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Among the three characteristics, reproducibility has been widely recognized as
the most problematic aspect of digital commerce. Participants in the
international copyright convention held in Geneva in December, 1996 spent an
extraordinary amount of time debating whether the temporary copies made by
computers when browsing, backing-up, and displaying on screen, being
reproductions, technically violate the copyrights. When copyright laws apply
to paper-based products, a simple act of photocopying is undoubtedly an area
of concern. For digital products, however, transmitting and reading a
document on a computer involve a different set of user behaviors. Transmitting
a file, for example, is based on the reproducibility of the file—a file transfer
program always sends a copy rather than the file itself. Such routines are
embedded in all aspects of computer file operations, but only now became a
serious issue.
How digital copyrights should evolve—through redefining copyright terms or
through adapting to the new usage pattern of digital products—will be
discussed in Chapter 5. But the three characteristics of digital products
discussed earlier clarify many aspects of digital copyrights. Resale prohibition,
for example, stems from the producer's concern about the infinite life span of
the product—indestructibility. Content control is necessary because of the
product's transmutability, and duplication prohibition is motivated by the ease
of reproducibility. Of these three, only transmutability can be countered by
producers through business strategies, frequent updating and customization.
Correspondingly, product differentiation and price discrimination based on
consumer tastes will be the main economic concerns in the electronic
commerce. The other two characteristics of digital products appear to work in
the consumers' favor, and producers have high incentives to prevent
reproduction and resale.
Digitized products can be composed of text, data, graphics, video, or audio.
Technologies are also making it possible to convey "feelings" in ad-dition to
sights and sounds. For example, when a cursor passes over a surface
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described as "rough" on the computer screen, a joystick or a mouse shakes and
jolts. Because of the ease and speed with which these components can be
reorganized, digital products are innately heterogeneous, making it difficult to
derive marketing or pricing strategies that can be used for a wide variety of
products. In this section, we develop a taxonomy by which digital products can
be grouped into a few major categories around common features and that is
meaningful in analyzing economic issues and developing business strategies.
A number of alternative schemes have been used to categorize digital products.
For example, file components have been used to characterize a product as
either a text file, a graphic or a data file. With the increasing use of multimedia
formats, however, this distinction is no longer useful. Categorizing digital
products into databases, information products, entertainment, software, and so
on, is both descriptive and subjective. Although useful, this practice is
inadequate and gives the false impression that electronic commerce simply
mirrors other product markets. Furthermore, it is loosely based on the usage of
a product which, as we discussed, may differ among consumers. In light of
this, we propose to categorize digital products based on user-product
interactions. Once converted into digital format, all products are essentially the
same. What determines the type of product is how it is acquired and how it is
used by consumers.
The first criterion we can use to classify digital products is the transfer mode.
Products that are downloaded at once or in piecemeal fashion, such as through
daily updates, can be called delivered products. Interactive products, on the
other hand, are products or services, such as remote-diagnosis, interactive
games, and tele-education. A simple communication between a server and a
client, such as a request for a search that is accomplished by sending
information and receiving a reply, is usually defined as interactive. In this
definition, however, all two-way communications are interactive.
Video-on-demand is regarded as an interactive service; a movie that allows
viewers to select different plots and endings is called an interactive movie. But
they simply operate under an automated process of the delivered transfer
mode.

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To characterize a transfer as interactive requires the use of a real-time
application and the need to interact in successive requests and responses. For
example, a requested search information may be delivered in seconds or in
hours depending on the status of network congestion. But once delivered, there
is no more need to interact. Sending another request will be a different service.
TCP (Transfer Control Protocol) is well suited for delivered products where
transfer integrity and reliability are of primary concern. The TCP waits until
all packets of a message are collected before reassembling and presenting the
message (see Chapter 3 for protocols). An interactive product or service, on
the other hand, consists of a stream of requests and responses in a session that
defines an objective such as a search, a game, or a consultation with a doctor.
A live or real-time communication requires an orderly transfer of data, for
example, you would not want to hear words backward. Other protocols than
TCP are in use for interactive services on the Internet, which we discuss in
Chapter 3.
At present, the vast majority of digital products on the Internet are delivered,
not interactive. Information products such as databases and electronic versions
of all printed media, including books, journals, newspapers, and magazines
dominate the commercial offerings in today's Internet commerce, and most are
delivered. Even web browsing is a delivered product, it depends on a
sequential transfer of files which does not require a continuous connection or a
real-time coordination with other users or processes. Similarly, a subscription
service to a database is not an interactive product even though it involves
periodic deliveries. Piecemeal access or delivery is the common mode of
transferring files when periodic updates are needed, or if the whole database is
not needed at once, or too expensive to buy. In any case, these updates do not
require real time interaction between sellers and subscribers, and despite that,
such products are called interactive editions, as they are delivered products.
A conventional definition of interactivity often includes search activities. For
example, forms and queries submitted to and processed by World Wide Web
servers are often considered to be interactive. However, search, catalog,
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and directory services can be considered to be equivalent to a subscription
service with a large database (indexes), a portion of which is accessed by a
buyer. Thus, searches are delivered, not interactive, products. What does seem
to be an interactive process in the case of search services is in fact the process
of customization. That is, a search service customizes the product on the basis
of a customer's requested criteria. However, once produced in this way, the
product is simply delivered to the customer. Many online services use
consumers' requests as an input to their production processes. These involve
producer-consumer interactions, but they are not interactive services in terms
of transfer mode.
True interactive products are becoming more common on the Internet. One
area of expanding business is online consumer services, including health
services such as telemedicine, remote diagnostics, and tele-education. Other
types of interactive products are based on real-time video and audio
communications, such as video conferencing, Internet telephony, and the
real-time Internet broadcasting or multicasting (see Chapter 3 for Internet
infrastructure), and entertainment, such as Internet Relay Chat groups or
games played in MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons or Domains). While the latter
may appear to be a frivolous use of this valuable resource, it is often the place
where new technologies and uses have been test-driven, in this case, a truly
interactive service. Such interactive digital products may actually be the most
profitable services in electronic commerce because they are less prone to
personal arbitrage and reselling. Interactive services are fundamentally
personalized products which have consumption value for only the targeted
individual. To maximize such benefits, sellers can also prevent copyright
violations by converting delivered products into interactive products, an
alternative strategy to a costly, technology-based, control mechanism.
The second criterion for our taxonomy is timeliness. Time-dependent products
lose value rapidly, which may be a deterrent to offering them for resale or
distributing without authorization. Timeliness is critical to daily news, stock
quotes, and other information needed for quick decision-making. The timely
value of these products can be maintained by periodic updates and sold
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as subscription goods whereby sellers retain some control. Examples are stock
quotes, government-issued economic data, and journal abstracts.
Time-dependent products become obsolete and worthless when they are
out-of-date. Artificially created time-dependence, however, can be useful. For
example, it can convert time-independent, durable goods into non-durable
goods. Considering the indestructibility of digital products, this is the most
important aspect which firms can exploit in marketing. For example, a web
page providing information about a resort town may be visited once. To entice
revisits, the content of the web page should be updated periodically. Updating
in this regard is an arbitrary means to make old products obsolete and open
new marketing opportunities. When a digital product is time-independent,
sellers tend to use such strategies to transform it into a time-dependent
product.
While timeliness refers to the nature of digital products, exogenous factors
may confound the ability to provide timely service. If the network is
congested, even timely information may become obsolete by the time it
reaches consumers. Congestion at the seller's server is, in principle,
controllable by the system via capacity and pricing, but congestion elsewhere
in the network is outside the control of the seller. When the delivery network
performs poorly, controlling a product's timeliness involves both an
endogenous production decision and an exogenous factor that may require
cooperation and integration with service providers.
Time-dependence may be specific to the individual or may be applied to all
consumers. The timeliness of news and stock quotes, for example, is general to
all consumers. The freshness and the value of the information diminishes at the
same rate for everybody. When such products are offered the next day, their
prices would reflect their reduced valuation across the market. However, the
result of searches and queries made by a consumer for a specific
decision-making is time-dependent to that consumer only. Suppose Alice
wants to buy information on the sales figures of a firm in which she is
considering investing. This information is time-dependent for Alice because it
is useful for her decision. But after the decision is made, the information is no
longer needed.

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However, it may still be of considerable value to Bob who compiles a table of
sales revenues. In such a case, Alice will be able to use the information and
still sell it to Bob at the full price.
In keeping with this, time-dependent products can be further divided into two
subgroups. Most databases, including indexes and directories, are
time-dependent specific to individuals, while news and stock quotes are
time-dependent general to all buyers. This difference is apparent if we consider
a similar distinction in TV programs. Producers of many programs, in
particular of sitcoms and TV movies, depend on revenues from reruns and
syndication. These programs find audiences who missed the first time. In
contrast, news and sports programs, in general, are not rebroadcast because of
their time-dependence across all consumers. Magazine-format news programs
have been popular despite this disadvantage because of low production costs.
More to the point, these programs often deal with time-insensitive topics, and
they recycle old programs, for example, features about "This Day in History"
and update segments. Similar adaptive strategies may be applicable to digital
product marketing.
To sum up, time-dependence may or may not be advantageous to marketers.
Since time-dependent products lose their value rapidly, there is a limited
window for marketing. But on the other hand, time-dependence discourages
reproduction and reselling, and avoids the problem of a durable
good—competing with its own past sales. When consumer reselling is not a
concern, products may be more valuable if they are made time-independent.
Bundling information into large databases, archives, and references helps to
reduce time-dependence. When the durable goods problem is present, sellers
increase time-dependence. Software, including computer programs and games,
is generally time-independent. Here, software vendors use updates quite often,
as discussed earlier, to force people to buy new products.
The third criterion against which to distinguish product categories is the
intensity in use. In this respect, single-use products resemble conventional
non-durable goods, and multiple-use products may correlate with durable
goods. As with traditional durable goods, consumers get benefits from a
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multiple-use product over time, unlike a single-use product. An example for a
single-use product is a search result which is no longer needed once it serves
its intended purpose. In contrast, software programs and most games can be
used repeatedly.
By definition, the total value of a multiple-use product must increase with use
since the value accumulates. But its growth rate may be diminishing, constant,
or increasing. In figure 2.2, graph A shows an example where a consumer's
utility is increasing, for example, as he learns more about a program and
becomes more efficient in its use. Graph B depicts a case of a product whose
utility declines over time, for example a computer game which becomes less
fun after each use. These are not the only possibilities. A different product's
utility cycle may be a combination of these two, increasing for a certain
duration and then decreasing, or vice versa. From time t1 to t2, the total utility
or value of a product is the area under the graph bounded by the two dates.
Figure 2.2 Increasing and decreasing utility.

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To the extent that consumers keep multiple-use products longer than single-use
products, it is in the firms' interest to prevent a resale of single-use products.
Since a "consumed" product in this case is still equivalent to a new product,
reselling by consumers directly competes with the product's original seller.
Literary works and other forms of electronic publishing appear to be most
severely affected by reselling. For these products, prohibiting resale as well as
reproduction may be needed. Another way of countering this ill effect is to
individualize products, thereby discouraging consumer arbitrage. For example,
query information from a specific search is individualized (by the choice of the
buyer). Therefore, reselling this information is not usually feasible unless two
people happen to look for the same information. For single-use products,
accommodating buyer choices is not only a good customer service but also a
requirement for survival. This is important for most subscription-based
database services.
Another criterion in our taxonomy is operational usage. Operational usage
refers to whether a product is an executable program or a fixed document. This
distinction is meaningful not only because of the prevalence of computer
software, but also because producers can add control over consumer usage by
converting any product into an executable program. Interactive CDs, for
example, present materials, like documents, in a controlled environment
prescribed by programmers.
Today, executable programs tend to be multiple-use products, although not all
multiple-use products are executable, such as music or speech products. But a
growing number of executable products will be found in single-use products.
Instead of delivering a document, for example, sellers may incorporate it
with-in an executable program which controls such aspects as viewing and
printing. Increasing use of Java-based applets will help producers to deliver
their products in an executable program that can be pre-programmed only for a
certain function. Many application programs such as word processing can be
downloaded as a Java-based applet and discarded after use. The increasing use
of applets then signals the unbundling of unwieldy programs, which today's
word processors have become.
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Similarly, the growing interest in NCs (network computers) instead of PCs as
the Internet appliance points to the future when most programs and documents
are delivered as executable programs on an as-needed basis rather than
pre-packaging all functions in shrink-wrapped products. Furthermore,
executable programs may be tailored to take advantage of the Internet's
distributed computing environment. The strength of the Java programming
language (http://www.javasoft. com/) lies in that a Java-based program can be
used in different platforms by using only an interpreter. That, in turn, implies
that duplicative efforts and wastes inherent in today's multiplatform
environment can be reduced. In view of these advantages, executable products
may become dominant over fixed products in the near future.
One final criterion of product categorization focuses on externalities.
Positive-externality products are those that increase (average) consumer
valuation if more people buy them. Examples of this are interactive services,
such as chat lines and games. Negative-externality products, on the other hand,
have a congestion effect if more people buy them. Negative externality can be
thought of as "wear and tear." If I resell (or duplicate and sell) a product, its
value declines as if it has suffered from wear and tear, except that this lowered
value affects the seller as well as the buyer. Most entertainment and
infor-mation products can be consumed without negative externality. A
primary example of negative externality is when information is used for gain
in a zero-sum game. For example, stock market investors benefit from
exclusive information. If there were more people who had the same
information, its value, or the profit-making opportunity from that information,
would be less than if the information were to be exclusive. When there is
negative externality as in this example, consumer arbitrage, reselling and
exchanging information, is less of a concern than the faith in the exclusivity.
For these products, buyers themselves place a stricter control over
reproduction. We have discussed the externality of information products in
section 2.2.
Externalities of digital products affect pricing and marketing decisions, as well
as the level of competition. Freeware, shareware, and demo versions of
software are given out to increase the market share, especially when a

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wide-spread use and acceptance by consumers opens other venues of
marketing, that is, when products have positive externalities. Many software
firms, including Netscape (http://www.netscape.com), have used this strategy
to establish dominance in their market. Once a computer software becomes
dominant, sellers of similar products often depend on the compatibility
between their products and the dominant software. Due to the positive
externality enjoyed by the users of compatible products, they often command a
higher price than non-compatible products (Gandal, 1994).
The dominant software firm, furthermore, enjoys a significant market power
from controlling the standards in its software. The following example
illustrates the importance of externalities in pricing and market competition.
Lotus Development Corporation, the maker of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet
program, claimed that Borland's Quattro Pro infringed its copyright by
replicating 1-2-3's user interface—menus and command structure—which
affords Borland's customers to run macros written for 1-2-3 (Lotus v. Borland,
1996). Equally divided (Justice Stevens absent), the Supreme Court let stand
the lower court's decision denying Lotus' claim. Although Lotus' claim was
denied, the nature of the decision clearly underscores the divided opinions of
the court and the continuing debate on the merits of externalities.
Product Selection Strategies Based on the Taxonomy
The taxonomy presented here will give readers a means to categorize and
compare different products being sold online. In each of the five criteria
discussed, a product can be changed from one characteristic to another, for
instance a time-independent product can be made time-dependent. One reason
for doing so may be to shorten the life of the product even though it physically
has almost an infinite life. Producers can also deal with digital products'
reproducibility and transmutability by changing product characteristics. A few
examples of how such a change can counter the problems arising from the
physical nature of digital products are given in the following sections. A
product may change in any of the five criteria we discussed.
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Changing Time Dependence
First in terms of timeliness, the indestructibility of a digital product means a

long life, and a time-independent product, just like durable goods, may limit
the number of sales because consumers simply make fewer purchases in their
lifetime or second-hand products are always available. In this case, the size of
the market shrinks as more products are sold, for example, a seller competes
with his or her own previous sales. A time-dependent product, on the other
hand, has a short product life and, like consumption goods, such as toothpaste
or soap, sellers find new markets or sales as long as there is a need for
consumption. Sellers also worry less about the negative effect of consumers
sharing products because an outdated product, in this case, is like a used
notebook.
Sharing through unauthorized reproduction is a considerable deterrent to
selling contents online. Thus, it is not surprising that companies who sell
time-dependent information, such as news, are at the forefront of electronic
commerce while copyright concerns discourage other digital product sellers.
Even when products are naturally time-independent, sellers can further
increase their time-dependence by putting out new, updated versions of the
product. Some information services guarantee timely updates only to paid
subscribers, offering outdated information freely. Besides changing the
timeliness of the contents, sellers may also implement congestion-sensitive
prices to reduce congestion at the local server level, and differentiate
customers according to their preference for timely access. Internet-wide
congestion, however, poses some problem since product sellers may not have
control over delivery. Unless a seller owns their own network, product price
and delivery price will have to be separated.
Changing Usage Patterns
Products may also be changed to influence the way they are used in terms of
intensity and operation. A single-use product is, of course, discarded after one
use, or has no value to the consumer. But it may have a value and use to other
consumers, which will encourage reselling given a chance. Computer software,
Page 86
reference CD-ROMs and compilations, such as movie databases, are
multiple-use products, whose value stream may be longer than their update
cycles. A book in digital form is a single-use product, but a list of books,
perhaps with abstracts and reviews for each entry, becomes a useful reference
tool, which is used over a longer period. Not surprisingly, references are one of
the most popular digital information products. A book is also
time-independent, but can be turn into a time-dependent product by
emphasizing the timeliness of its content or its temporary popularity.
Likewise, multiple-use products can be time-dependent, further protecting the
market against reselling and reproduction.
Similarly, instead of selling an information product online, one can change it
into an executable program to gain control over its consumption. For example,
a table of daily average rainfall in Austin, Texas, may be sold as a table or as a
program that allows users to make queries or to graph. Other information, such
as a formula that calculates interest rates, can be sold as a program that does
not reveal the formula itself, but only enables its users to derive desired results.
A user's guide for a computer program can be made into an executable
software agent, which not only offers some added functionalities, such as
search, interface, and execute functions integrated into the program itself, but
also provides producers an extensive control over its usage and some
protection against copyright infringements. Lastly, as mentioned earlier, an
executable product, if more likely to be a multiple-use product, needs an added
protection against reselling.
Transfer Mode and Externalities
In terms of transfer modes, interactive services have not yet reached their full
potential for technological reasons. But they may eventually become products
and services with the highest level of value added. Real-time interactive
applications, such as voice on the Internet, video conferencing, and
multicasting based on MBONE, will change the way we access information
and interact on the Internet. To support these activities, the Internet
infrastructure is being upgraded with faster modems, wider bandwidths,
reliable and real-time transfer modes, such as cell relays, asynchronous
transfer mode (ATM), and new

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protocols to support transmission (see Kalakota and Whinston, 1996, for
multimedia and multicast technologies). But the critical issue is whether these
engineering solutions will be able to outpace interactive services' rapidly
increasing demand for bandwidths.
For products with positive externalities, like computer programs and games,
we see sellers trying to create profit opportunities based on the externality. By
providing freeware and shareware, programmers can create credentials and a
reputation and establish a certain market position which can later be recouped
from corporate sales. Similar strategies can be used for time-dependent
products. For example, news companies freely distribute headline news, but
charge for other services. Since free news is used to attract potential
customers, its positive externality works to the seller's advantage. Such
almost-free transactions seem to contradict the commercial aspirations of
potential Internet merchants. However, it is important to recognize that these
strategies are based on the characteristics of digital products, not an indication
that the Internet marketplace lacks copyright protection or commercial
opportunities.
2.4.Summary
We have defined digital products and services in terms of their usage and
physical characteristics, and offered a convenient taxonomy to classify various
digital products, highlighting their fundamental differences. Digital products
include all goods that are already in digital format or that can be digitized.
Purely physical products can also be partially digitized when they are made
into smart products equipped with digital interfaces. But an equally important
area of digitization is the business process itself. All aspects of digital
communication and processing can be considered to be digital products. In this
way, electronic commerce extends to the commerce of physical products
because many business transactions involving physical products can be
digitized and be a part of digital electronic commerce.
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The physical characteristics of digital products are fundamental and raise
contentious issues, such as digital copyrights and the use of consumer
information. At the same time, they are critical in analyzing digital markets in
terms of many economic issues. For example, indestructibility relates to the
issues of quality degradation, personal arbitrage, and the mode of
retailing—sale, renting, leasing, or subscription. Transmutability is also
fundamental in understanding product development, customization, and
differentiation strategies. In the process of customizing a product, firms also
have to deal with the problem of consumer information and privacy. Such
issues are the topics of the remaining chapters.
Page 89
References
Barlow, J.P., 1993. "Selling wine without bottles: the economy of mind on the
global net." Available in continuously evolving editions at various sites
including http://icg.stwing.upenn.edu/cis590/reading.063.html.
Bulow, J., 1982. "Durable-goods monopolists." Journal of Political Economy,

90: 314_332.
Coase, R. H., 1972. "Durability and monopoly." Journal of Law and
Economics, 15: 143_149.
Gandal, N., 1994. "Hedonic price indexes for spreadsheets and an empirical
test for network externalities." Rand Journal of Economics, 25(1): 160_170.
Kalakota, R. and A.B. Whinston, 1996. Frontiers of Electronic Commerce.
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Lotus v. Borland, 1996. Summary of the case and court briefs can be found at
http://server.berkeley.edu/HTLJ/lvb/lvbindex.html. Economics professors'
amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court can be found at
http://www.Software.Industry.org/ issues/docs-htm/brf-econ.html.

Value of Information
Lave, L.B., 1963. "The Value of Better Weather Information to the Raisin
Industry." Econometrica 31: 151_64.
Page 90
Gould, J.P., 1974. "Risk, Stochasitic Preference, and the Value of
Information." Journal of Economic Theory 8: 64_85.
Antonovitz, F., and T. Roe, 1986. "A Theoretical and Empirical Approach to
the Value of Information in Risky Markets." Review of Economics and
Statistics 68: 105_14.
Electronic Markets
McAfee, R.P. and J. McMillan, 1997. "Electronic Markets" in Readings in

Electronic Commerce, Addison-Wesley. The authors discuss the economic
implications of using electronic markets such as the Internet for various
purposes where the administrative decision-making process and market pricing
can be combined. They give several examples of functioning electronic
markets.
Network Externalities
Katz, M. and C. Shapiro, 1986. "Technology Adoption in the Presence of

Network Externalities." Journal of Political Economy, 94(4): 822_841.
Discusses how one technology is adopted as a standard when there is a
competing incompatible technology. They point out that a less efficient
technology might dominate in a free entry market.
Farrell, J. and G. Saloner, 1985. "Standardization, Compatibility, and
Innovation." Rand Journal of Economics, 16(1): 70_83. This paper examines
the case where an industry standard acquires excess inertia which prevents the
adoption of new and more efficient technologies.
Gandal, N., 1994, is an empirical test of the hypothesis that a computer
software with compatibility with popular industry standards commands a
higher price.
Page 91
Economides, N., 1996. "The Economics of Networks." International Journal of
Industrial Organization, 16(4): 673_699. This paper on network externalities
compares the economic structure of networks with the structure of vertically
related industries. Prof. Economides also maintains a web site devoted to the
economics of networks at http://raven.stern.nyu.edu/networks/.
Internet Resources
Java Programming Language
Java was developed by Sun Microsystems and is a favored language for

applets. SUN Java site is at http://www.javasoft.com.
Java FAQ list and tutorial are at http://sunsite.unc.edu/javafaq/javafaq.html.
Commercial Sites Index
Open Market maintains, with weekly updates, a listing of commercial sites and
publishes it at http://www.directory.net/dir/statistics.html.
Virtual Museums and Florist
An exhibition of 18th-century French paintings is at

http://www.culture.fr/lumiere/documents/files/imaginary_exhibition.html.
Smithsonian Photographs Online (http://photo2.si.edu/) has an interactive
virtual exhibition on information technology, "Information Age: People,
Information & Technology" at http://photo2.si.edu/infoage.html.
You can send virtual flowers online at http://www.virtualflowers.com/.
Page 92
Medical Sites on the Internet
Medical web sites often contain in-depth information about diseases, an index
of physicians, and abstracts and journal articles dealing with today's health
issues. Although these are not interactive services as defined in the text, an
examination of the following sites will give an indication on how future
interactive medical services will look like on the net.
● American Medical Association (AMA): http://www.ama-assn.org.
AMA web site also contains JAMA, Journal of the American Medical
Association
(http://www.ama-assn.org/public/journals/jama/jamahome.htm) and an
HIV/AIDS information center
(http://www.ama-assn.org/special/hiv/hivhome.htm).
● Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov
● Go Ask Alice: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/healthwise/alice.html
● Travel Health Online: http://www.ripprep.com
● Tripod's Ask the Doctor: http://www.tripod.com/living/ask_doc
● Typing Injury Archive: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dwallach/tifaq
● Women's Health Specialists at San Diego:
http://www.planetearth.net/SanDiego/DrRoss/submit.html

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CHAPTER 3
Internet Infrastructure and Pricing

Products and services native to the Internet range from access provision to
subscription-based information services. As the Internet is privatized, a large
body of economic literature has grown around how to price infrastructure and
connection services. By now, the general public is well aware of the
congestion and subscription pricing problems experienced by America Online
Inc. (http://www.aol.com). Also, the converging telecommunications
infrastructure has largely eliminated once-clear boundaries between telephone,
cable, satellite, wireless, and Internet service industries, which are all vying to
serve Internet communication and content businesses. This chapter provides an
overview of Internet communications technology—which is part of the
enabling technologies of electronic commerce along with computer hardware,
software, and the multimedia industry—and reviews various ways to price the
infrastructure and evaluate it in terms of economic efficiency.
3.1.Internet Pipelines
The network infrastructure of the Internet is similar to that of a telephone
system. In fact, most of the Internet traffic travels on the same network used
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for local and long-distance telephone calls, which may consist of copper wires,
coaxial cables, fiber-optic cables, and wireless and satellite systems. If you
consider messages as water, the Internet infrastructure is a system of pipes of
varying sizes. There are four levels of networks in this traffic distribution
system: end users, Local Access Networks (LANs), regional networks, and
backbone networks (see fig. 3.1).
● End users. Consumers and businesses that initiate and receive messages
using their computers, modems, and other equipment. They connect to
LANs either directly (a direct Ethernet connection or a dedicated ISDN
line, for example) or through dial-up service by using a telephone or
cable modem. This dial-up connection establishes only a temporary
connection to the network.
● Local Access Networks. These networks are Internet service providers,
university and research institutions, local access facilities of a
commercial online service provider, and corporate servers that accept
remote dial-up connections.
● Regional networks. These networks provide a bridge between LANs and
various backbone networks. A regional network may cover an area
within a state, a state-wide area, or several states, collecting messages
and sending them to their destinations via the backbone network. Many
of these mid-level regional networks have received support from the
National Science Foundation (NSF), which operated a national
backbone network called NSFnet from 1984 until 1996. Examples
include California Education and Research Federation Network
(CERFnet), the Southeastern Universities Research Association
(SURAnet), THEnet of Texas, NYSERnet of New York, and Westnet of
Colorado. When the NSFnet backbone was retired in 1996, these
regional networks were able to direct their traffic through commercial
backbone operators.
● Backbone networks. These networks carry Internet traffic between
regional networks and, if a connection is not present, direct it to other
interconnected backbone networks that have a connection to destination
regional networks. A backbone network has a very high bandwidth
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made up of a fiber-optic network, often capable of sending hundreds of
megabits per second. Backbone networks are also linked internationally.
Mexico's networks, for example, are linked to the CERFnet via a
satellite, as is the System Engineering Research Institute (SERI) of
Seoul, Korea. EBONE provides backbone services to a consortium of
European regional networks.
As regional networks are commercialized and their traffic is routed via three
major commercial backbone carriers—AT&T, Sprint, and MCI—there may
not be much difference to some LANs between regional and backbone
networks. Commercial backbone carriers use the same networks they use for
long-distance telephone traffic. In this sense, the Internet is not much different
from traditional telephone networks as far as the infrastructure is concerned.
What distinguishes the Internet is the way traffic is handled.
Figure 3.1 Internet network architecture.
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3.2.Traffic Control on the Internet

Messages sent through the pipeline system shown in figure 3.1—that is, the
Internet—are delivered to their destination by a traffic control and distribution
system called the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
In fact, the TCP/IP is a collection of protocols that include TCP and IP
protocols as well as User Datagram Protocols (UDP), Internet Control
Message Protocol (ICMP), and others. For purposes here, IP and TCP
protocols are sufficient to understand how messages are sent and received on
the Internet. This section examines three essential features of Internet traffic:
packet switching, IP addresses and routing, and TCP protocol.
Packet Switching
The traditional telephone system transmits data—that is, voice—by using a

circuit switching network (see fig. 3.2). When Alice (at 512-555-1122) calls
Charlie (at 213-555-1212), for example, a circuit is opened via switches,
connecting Alice and Charlie directly. This open circuit is maintained whether
they are talking or not (that is, regardless of traffic). Note that if the switch at
the area code 213 breaks down, Alice will not be able to call Charlie.
The Internet, on the other hand, uses a technology known as packet switching,
which sends packets of data by way of routers. A message is broken down into
many chunks of data called packets, each of which is more or less a few
kilobytes long. Each packet contains necessary information such as the address
for the destination—called an IP address.
Suppose, for example, that Alice sends a message to Charlie in a packet
switching system where R1 through R6 represent computers and routers that
check the address in each packet and forward it to the appropriate destination
(see fig. 3.3). Rather than opening a circuit from Alice to Charlie, the Internet
Protocol finds one route that is working on the IP network (that is, the Internet)
and sends the packets through, for example, R1 to R2 to R6. If R2 or any of
the component computers is unable to deliver the message or if R2's
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physical connection is down, Alice's packets may be routed through many
alternative routes—through R4, for example (as figure 3.3 shows). This robust
nature of messaging and the added bonus of economizing available physical
circuits were the primary reason why ARPA (Advanced Research Projects
Agency of the U.S. Defense Department) opted to use packet switching for its
ARPAnet, the predecessor of the Internet.
Figure 3.2 The circuit switching network of telephone technology.
Internet Protocol Addresses
Similar to telephone numbers, each Internet node or host has a unique address
called an IP address, which is used to route messages. An IP address is defined

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by a 32-bit number—four 8-bit numbers. Each 8-bit (that is, 1 byte) number
can specify 256 different sites—from 0 to 255 (or 00000000 to 11111111 in
binary numbers). These four 8-bit numbers are separated by a period—for
example, 128.83.124.55. The separator period represents a different class of
network in a hierarchy; the computer with IP address 128.83.124.55 is
connected to a higher level network with the address 128.83.124.* (class C
network), which is again connected to a still higher network of 128.83.*.*
(class B network). A class A network is denoted with only the first-level IP
number.
Figure 3.3 IP packet switching.

If a university network is assigned to a class B network as in 128.83, all its
component sub-networks and computers share the same top two IP addresses.
Its default IP address is referred to as 128.83.0.0, and its main server will
typically have an IP address as 128.83.1.1. With 256 third-level and 256
fourth-level addresses, this class B network can accommodate more than
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65,000 unique IP addresses in its network. A class C network can assign 256
IP addresses. Theoretically, there can be about 17 million class C networks
(256 ¥ 256 ¥ 256) and over one trillion unique IP addresses. But many class A
networks are reserved for special purposes—224 to 239 for multicasting, for
example—and class B networks may not use all their assigned numbers. For
these reasons, far fewer IP addresses are available.
This system of IP addresses is unique and provides a means of identifying all
the component computers on the Internet. The class B network with
128.83.*.*, for example, may denote all University of Texas at Austin
computers; the third level 124 may be those within the economics department;
and finally the fourth level 55 may be a computer in the graduate lounge. This
computer in turn may serve several graduate students by maintaining different
account names, one of which may be specified as [email protected].
If Alice sends a message to Charlie, her message is broken down into several
packets, each of which contains Charlie's IP address. Alice's computer
searches to find out Charlie's location by sending inquiries to upper-level
network servers until it locates Charlie's computer. Alice's computer also keeps
a list of IP addresses, but it is usually limited to local addresses, unlike
regional network servers that maintain a complete list. After Charlie's address
is found, Alice's computer launches a program to send packets and monitor the
progress.
Because the number-denominated IP addresses are hard to remember, domain
names corresponding to each IP address are used instead. Therefore, Charlie's
computer may have a domain name of eco1.utexas.edu. Each IP address is
matched to a unique domain name by the Internet's Domain Name System
(DNS). Domain names are also organized in a hierarchy. Typically, a working
domain name consists of at least two names: a top-level domain name and a
unique name. The top-level domains are edu for educational institutions, com
for companies, gov for governments, and so on. Other top-level domains
include countries such as us (the United States), mx (Mexico), kr (South
Korea), and so forth. Seven new domains are added in 1997: firm, store, web,
arts, info, nom (for individuals), and rec (for recreational sites). A unique
domain name is added (but spelled first) to this top-level domain. The
University of Texas domain name, for example, consists of utexas.edu.
Computers
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within the utexas.edu network are also given unique names, which are called
subdomains. In the preceding example, the domain name of Charlie's computer
was eco1.utexas.edu.
Unlike IP addresses, there is no limit to the number of possible domain names.
A single node may be known by different names as long as there is a way to
map between domain names and their corresponding IP addresses. Such a
database is kept in the DNS server, or nameserver, accessed by a router. A
router is switching equipment that receives, forwards, and distributes each
packet by matching IP addresses and domain names.
Transmission Control Protocol
IP takes care of addressing and finding the right destination. TCP is

responsible for breaking a message into packets, sending the packets to the IP
network, and reassembling them when received. TCP is actually one of many
possible transmission protocols used for Internet traffic. When assembling
received packets, TCP counts them and requests re-sends if some of them are
missing or corrupted. On the other hand, User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a
protocol by which each packet is sent out without requiring an
acknowledgment from the receiver. Unlike TCP, UDP does not check the
integrity of each packet—that is, some noise is allowed—but its speed is well
suited for real-time and Internet broadcasting applications. TCP is preferred
for data transfers and remote applications such as Telnet.
Unicast, Broadcast, and Multicast
An efficient mechanism for resource allocation is needed to increase social

welfare for limited resources such as the Internet. Such a mechanism needs to
consider system-level (engineering) and economic solutions. An economic
solution is based on efficient pricing strategies, discussed in the next section,
that match available resources and uses. An engineering solution depends on a
network's configuration and traffic control. If a telephone company were to
build dedicated lines for 10 persons, for example, it would need to string 100
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point-to-point lines to connect each one with everyone else. Such a system will
never have a congestion problem, but will be costly and misallocate society's
resources to redundant and seldom-used telephone lines. Instead, therefore, a
telephone network uses a shared line and switching equipment to maximize the
benefit from laying a system of wires.
The Internet network architecture is somewhat similar to the telephone
network, but the Internet can support one-to-many (broadcast) distribution in
addition to one-to-one (unicast) communication (the telephone system model).
Unicasting is what was previously described: relaying messages from a sender
to a receiver. As figure 3.4 shows, Alice can send a message to anyone who
has a unique IP address. She can also broadcast the same message by sending
it to multiple recipients. An automated system of broadcasting is a mailing list
server that duplicates an incoming message and sends it out to all subscribers,
who can then also respond to the message by broadcasting a reply. In this
sense, the Internet is also used for many-to-many broadcasting. When
broadcasting, however, Alice's message occupies a lot of the Internet's
bandwidth between her and all her correspondents. When the traffic consists of
heavy-duty multimedia files, the existing infrastructure suffers greatly from
this unnecessary duplication.
Internet multicasting proposals are geared toward reducing the amount of
traffic due to this redundancy in broadcasting by using a different method of
routing messages. Suppose, for example, that Alice in Dallas wants to
broadcast her video clip on the Internet. Suppose also that there are 100
interested Internet surfers in Houston. By broadcasting, Alice's enormous
video file will travel the network between Dallas and Houston 100 times,
frustrating a Houston radiologist who is waiting for an X-ray file from a Dallas
hospital. Alternatively, 100 Houstonians can subscribe to a multicast server in
Houston, which locally distributes multicast messages. Alice then sends her
file to a Dallas multicast host, which is connected to a multicast IP network
(see fig. 3.4). Her file is sent over—or travels through—this network only
once. Interested Houstonians connect to their local multicast server, which
broadcasts the message. The term multicasting is used to distinguish this type
of distribution from broadcasting.

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One of the primary reasons for multicasting is to use the Internet infrastructure
more efficiently and perhaps to prepare for the ever-increasing demand for
bandwidth by real-time and multimedia applications. Although all feasible
engineering and network solutions should be examined and implemented, the
driving force behind a congested network is the consumer usage and
preference for bandwidth. Economic research in infrastructure pricing is aimed
at allocating resources by influencing consumption and investment behaviors,
which the next section examines.
Figure 3.4 Various ways to send a message on the Internet.

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3.3.The Infrastructure Convergence

Although the TCP/IP protocol is decidedly different from circuit switching
used for voice communication on telephone lines, the same physical wires and
cables are used for both Internet and telephone communications. Furthermore,
as voice and television signals are digitized, the same network and equipment
can handle Internet, telephone, and cable data. As a result, this digital
convergence is produced in the telecommunications infrastructure and the
possibility of more competition and lower prices for voice, video, and Internet
services. Appropriately, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 began
deregulating component industries within the telecommunications sector,
allowing competition in each other's turf. The major players in this
convergence game include local telephone companies (Regional Bell
Operating Companies or RBOCs), long distance carriers (LDCs), cable system
operators (CSOs), wireless service providers, Internet service providers (ISPs),
and computer hardware and software sellers. Each in this alphabet soup serves
some portion of the Internet network.
The expected head-on competition between RBOCs and CSOs will be some
years away, because the difference in switching technology constrains CSOs
from providing one-to-one voice communications and RBOCs lack sufficient
bandwidth to fully accommodate video services. Instead, competition from
LDCs and Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) systems are proving to be more
immediate to RBOCs and CSOs, respectively. In terms of Internet traffic,
however, LDCs such as AT&T, Sprint, and MCI already handle a significant
portion of the Internet's backbone traffic. Sprint alone carries about 50 percent
of the long-haul traffic on the Internet. Likewise, RBOCs provide telephone
lines for home users to dial up their ISPs. CSOs have also entered the Internet
service market with high-bandwidth cable modems. Before discussing efficient
Internet pricing and ownership structure in the following sections, an overview
of how messages travel on the Internet is in order.
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The Convergence in the Last Mile
The beginning of this chapter categorized three types of Internet service

providers: Local Access Networks, regional networks, and backbone networks.
LANs, typically called ISPs, are what consumers connect to from home. The
number of ISPs has grown tremendously since 1991 when the U.S.
government began privatizing the Internet. The Internet's backbone, which was
fully funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has since retired;
privately owned backbone networks now carry most of the Internet traffic.
Also encouraged by the NSF, more regional networks were created. These
regional networks sell ISPs access to the backbone networks. Even backbone
operators and regional networks, however, may offer Internet service to
consumers. For the purposes here, then, only two types of services need to be
distinguished: the last mile service from a computer to an access point to the
Internet, and the remaining long-haul service. The latter may involve a layer of
service providers, including a dial-up ISP reseller, a regional network service,
and a backbone operator. Of concern is the way consumers first gain access to
any of these Internet network services, distinguishing it from the rest of
Internet networks.
To use the highway analogy, the last mile consists of your driveway from the
street and the streets in the neighborhood. Major city streets are ISPs and
regional networks; highways are Internet backbones. An Internet user has
multiple options to establish a connection to the Internet, including the
following:
● Dial-up connection through plain, old copper wires (via RBOCs)
● Dial-up connection based on faster Integrated Services Digital Network

(ISDN) service (via RBOCs)
● Direct connection through Local Area Network (LAN) and Ethernet (via
ISPs)
● Coaxial connection using a cable modem (via CSOs)
Most home users rely on the first option—involving a RBOC and an ISP to
complete the connection, with a maximum connection speed of less than 50
kbps (kilobits per second). An ISDN service is somewhat faster, ranging from
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64 to 128 kbps. A direct LAN/Ethernet connection, usually available in
workplaces and on university campuses, can range from 1 to 10 mbps
(megabits per second). This speed is possible because a LAN is directly
connected to a system—a firm, a university, or an ISP.
The first two (slow) options are based on traditional twisted pair copper wires,
which are akin to one-lane driveways. The ISDN and more recent
Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) increase the capacity of
existing wires by compressing messages, achieving the rate of 1.5 to 3 mbps
with ADSL. Coaxial cables used by CSOs can carry much more traffic; and
using cable modems, they offer a much faster speed of 10 mbps or more.
Unfortunately, faster options are available in limited areas and require
significant investments in additional equipment.
A faster, direct connection today requires a physical connection to an ISP. But
the next generation Internet traffic may very well bypass traditional telephone
or cable networks and connect users via satellites, offering still another option
to access the Internet. Primarily targeted for mobile computing, low earth
orbital satellites (LEOS) can interact with transponders in personal computers,
which can send and receive data without involving RBOCs or CSOs. Such
wireless communications begin to dominate many business sectors. Cable
subscribers, through Direct Broadcast Satellites, currently account for less than
10 percent of the cable television market, but the share is growing rapidly.
Similarly, long-distance telephone companies may use satellite links to bypass
local access exchanges. Even local exchanges can be constructed entirely with
cell phone networks. Some predict that wireless networks will be used for
voice communication, while wired—coaxial and fiber—networks will be
carrying multimedia contents.
ISPs, RBOCs, and CSOs are the major players in Internet connection services
for end users. An ISP typically leases a line from a larger ISP or a regional
network provider to transport Internet messages, for which it pays about 25 to
40 percent of total costs (Srinagesh, 1995). This connection ranges from a 56
kbps line to a 1.5 mbps (T1) connection to a very high T3 at 45 mbps.
Remaining costs include equipment such as servers, modems and

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routers, leased telephone lines from an RBOC, and customer service expenses.
According to an estimate by Forbes (as quoted in Srinagesh, 1995), a small
ISP provider in 1993 needed to invest about $30,000 for
equipment—representing sunk costs—and $1,000 per month for telephone
connections. Larger ISPs have larger sunk costs because they often have their
own backbone networks and equipment. These ISPs are intermediaries that
pay long-haul carriers for IP transport and offer individuals access to the
Internet at a price. A dial-up connection usually costs from $10 to $30 a
month, in addition to any charge for telephone connection. In comparison,
cable companies charge about $40 a month for Internet access using cable
modems.
The simple fact that a consumer can connect to the Internet via telephone,
television cable, wireless, or a direct connection highlights the nature of
infrastructure convergence. In terms of bandwidth, CSOs are in a superior
position over their competitors. If voice, video, and data transports were to be
handled by a single connection to a home, coaxial cables would offer the best
capacity for the necessary last mile. In other words, when cars are bigger than
18-wheelers, a much larger driveway will be needed even when trips are made
only occasionally. But telephone companies are meeting the bandwidth
challenge through compression technologies and by rewiring homes from
curbs. CSOs on the other hand seem to focus on the plain, old television
broadcasting.
Today's infrastructure convergence will change the economics of the last
mile—that is, the way consumers connect to the infrastructure, be it for the
Internet, telephone, or television. As market boundaries fall, the same
converging force has the potential to produce a few firms with significant
market power across many industries. Perhaps, only one pipeline—a
telecommunication monopoly—may handle all types of data transfers from
home. A raging debate about who will be that monopolist has already begun.
Some argue that CSOs have the advantage in bandwidth because their coaxial
cables can carry more data than telephone's twisted copper wires. RBOCs,
however, are more familiar with switching technologies and two-way
communications, and as a result they are well positioned to expand their
business into the Internet service provider market and cable television. Cable
operators face a significant amount
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of investment before they can compete in voice and Internet data transfers
(Benerofe and Kissane, 1996). Unlike the horizontal market monopolization of
a century ago, however, today's convergence is not recognized as a potentially
anticompetitive threat. Telecommunications research and policy must focus on
anticompetitive issues such as vertical and inter-industry integration by
telecommunications firms, which Chapter 11 discusses in more detail.
The increasing intensity in the debate about access charges and tax policies
mirrors the high stake in the battle for the last mile fought among RBOCs,
ISPs, and LDCs. The peculiar pricing structure of the Internet, or the lack of it,
has prompted a necessary debate about Internet access prices both among
academics, as discussed in the previous section, and in courts and the
Congress. Especially poignant is the conflict between local ISPs and RBOCs.
Although RBOCs have traditionally relied on a complicated fee
schedule—distinguishing type of usage, time, and distance—to recover their
fixed costs, the Internet traffic on their local loop is neither distinguished from
voice nor priced according to usage. Efficient prices, however, have to be
applied not only to telephone calls to an ISP but also to the Internet traffic
itself (that is, IP transport on the backbone). RBOCs themselves have entered
into backbone business along with LDCs and large regional ISPs. (Chapter 11
elaborates on the issue of Internet access charges involving the FCC and other
taxation topics.)
Long-Haul Traffic
Three LDCs—AT&T, Sprint, and MCI—carry most of the Internet long-haul

traffic. As mentioned earlier, Sprint, which is growing faster than AT&T or
MCI, alone accounts for about half of all Internet backbone traffic (Bernier
1996). LDCs' backbone networks are the same fiber-optic networks that carry
long distance telephone calls. The data travels through fiber networks at a
hyper-fast rate of 52 mbps to 2.5 gbps (gigabits per second) based on
Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) standards. Faster and more reliable
communications are possible as new technologies and standards are
implemented, such as frame relay technology and cell relay based on switched
multimegabit
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data service (SMDS) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) (see "Internet
Resources" at the end of this chapter).
Other commercial services that offer national and international connectivity
with their own backbones include UUNET, AlterNet, and PSINet in the U.S.,
and Datalink (Finland), EUNET (Europe), SWIPnet (Sweden), and so on, and
commercial online services such as America Online, CompuServe, and
Microsoft Network. These networks are interconnected and accessible through
access points known as Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX, pronounced
"kicks"). Many regional and smaller local networks are also connected to the
Internet through CIX. The interconnection arrangement among CIX
members—and with commercial carriers—is just an agreement to honor each
other's traffic without an elaborate system of metering and pricing usage.
Again, efficient prices are not implemented.
Increasingly, it is the case that a backbone operator may offer Internet services
directly to consumers. AT&T's Worldnet, InternetMCI, and SprintLink, for
example, offer Internet services at a monthly fee comparable to that of local
ISPs. Still, consumers must go through local RBOCs to dial up. But unlike
long distance calls, for which they pay RBOCs metered usage charges, LDCs
pay only fixed monthly fees for their telephone connections. Suppose that
AT&T offers Internet long distance calls through its Internet service. These
calls go through the same networks as if made by a telephone (from a local
interchange through AT&T and to a destination interchange, and vice versa).
RBOCs, however, do not collect usage fees that they need to recover fixed
costs for their local infrastructure. As a result of the Telecommunications Act
of 1996, RBOCs themselves are merging and establishing national networks,
potentially duplicating existing infrastructure owned by LDCs and national
ISPs. In this battle of giants, local ISPs will find it hard to survive. And if a
telephone network were a natural monopoly, the Internet infrastructure would
have to be another, for which efficient prices and regulations would have to be
implemented to ensure its growth and to maximize social benefits. The future
information infrastructure may consist of many networks, each specializing in
one type of data—wireless for voice, coaxial

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cables for multimedia, and fiber-optic cables for long hauls, for example. Of
course, efficient prices will also facilitate in allocating resources to their most
efficient uses.
3.4.Congestion and Infrastructure Pricing

We have been witnessing the transformation of the Internet from being an
academic and research network into a medium for fun, education, exploration,
communication, propaganda, and, most of all, for doing business, aided by the
spread of the World Wide Web, networked computing, and electronic
commerce. Congestion is beginning to cripple network performance, however,
substantially diminishing the net benefits of users and service providers. To
witness, Dan Rather on the CBS television news on the election night,
November 5, 1996, reported the near collapse of the Internet due to people
trying to access election results nationwide. America Online instituted a
monthly flat-rate, only to be inundated by complaints (and lawsuits) from its
members being frustrated by congestion. The Internet, in the short time it
received spotlight in the popular press, has acquired its ignominious nickname:
the World Wide Wait.
These problems are inherent in the current Internet infrastructure and are likely
to grow worse for at least the following three reasons:
● The number of people who have acquired Internet connectivity is
doubling every year. Further, the bandwidth requirements of future
multimedia applications such as video conferencing and
movies-on-demand are orders of magnitude greater than current uses
(which are predominantly text-based). Although bandwidth capacity is
increasing dramatically (from 56 kbps a decade ago to 45 mbps
currently and 1 gbps in the near future), it is doubtful that capacity
growth can keep up with demand growth, and in any event serious
bottlenecks will remain at the connection pipelines to the backbone.
Hence, key resources are and will remain scarce for the foreseeable
future.
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● The pricing strategies of infrastructure owners and access providers
complicate the issue. Infrastructure owners charge flat fees for access,
and access providers use either a price based on time of usage, or, as
recent trends indicate, a flat monthly fee. Neither takes the level of
congestion into account. A "tragedy of the commons" emerges in which
the social value generated by the Internet is diminished by overuse and
inefficient use.
● The system rations resources according to user patience rather than
social value. Although impatient users will voluntarily leave a congested
network, they are not necessarily the low-value users. Without
incentive-compatible priorities, mission critical applications have no
guarantee of precedence over others, or any expected level of
performance. A teenager with idle time can download tetrabytes of
entertaining video clips, blocking a cardiac surgeon from receiving vital
X-ray data from a distant hospital in time to save a patient.
The challenge is how to manage the traffic and resources in a manner that
permits the full realization of the potential of the Internet. Current efforts to
manage network resources fall into two basic categories:
● Engineering fixes, and
● Non-incentive-compatible priority schemes
The engineering fixes involve substantial increases in capacity at

bottlenecks—which are overloaded routers, regional networks, Internet access
points, modem banks, and local telephone lines. This approach may work in
the short term; however, it is expensive and is doomed to fail in the long-run
because bandwidth use will always expand to fill the available capacity. There
is no apparent upper limit on bandwidth uses. If capacity is expanded to handle
real-time video, 3-D imaging will demand more bandwidth, and after that
virtual reality, and so on. Further, the congestion that arises from the current
inefficient pricing schemes can lead to inappropriate and ineffective
infrastructure investments.
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The next generation Internet Protocol IPv6 (Deering and Hinden, 1995) is
trying to address the performance issue by moving away from a best-effort,
first-come first-serve approach to one of differentiating traffic based on
priority classes and associating priorities with different application classes.
Such solutions, however, still do not consider the criticality of the usage
context and are prone to misuse. Just because a video stream requires better
response time, for example, it does not mean a recreational video should be
preferred over a simple text stream being used for a stock purchase. Moreover,
the priority selection in IPv6 is non-incentive-compatible: Nothing prevents a
user or application from artificially boosting its priority to achieve better
performance.
Recent research in computer science has been increasingly drawing from
economic theory to design resource allocation schemes, otherwise referred to
as load balancing schemes. Economics, being the study of resource allocation
problems, can provide answers, and the standard economic answer is to create
markets and let prices allocate the scarce resources. The economic answer for
the Internet, however, is a bit more complicated. First, because most of the
costs are sunk into infrastructure, the marginal cost of Internet data transport is
essentially zero, so if Internet resources were private goods prices should be
zero. Note that this discussion separates the process of data transport from the
process of producing the information content of the packet being transported,
and focuses now on the former. Second, Internet resources are public goods
and consequently congestion is a potential negative externality. Marginal-cost
pricing of public goods can lead to a "tragedy of the commons," in which the
common resource is overutilized, causing avoidable losses for the whole
society. When negative externalities are real possibilities, prices should exceed
the marginal cost of production by the marginal social cost of the congestion,
in which case a consumer uses the resource if and only if his or her private
benefit from use exceeds the social cost of that usage. This is the theoretical
economic argument underpinning virtually all proposals for usage-based
pricing of Internet resources. Differences in how to implement this theoretical
ideal separate the different proposals.
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One potential barrier to the adoption of a more rational, economics-based
approach toward resource allocation is social. People have become accustomed
to thinking of computing resources as "free," and may find even a nominal
charge objectionable. Users should recognize that the current system does not
make limited resources "free," however, but instead exacts its pound of flesh
for using a congested web site in terms of time (one of our most precious
limited resources). Because time is valuable, every user should be willing to
pay something if that will significantly reduce his or her waiting for web sites.
Economic theory suggests that, if properly structured, rationing resources by
price rather than by having people wait in queues will, on balance, leave
people more satisfied. Further, during uncongested off-peak times the optimal
congestion prices will be zero, so users with very low values of time can
reallocate their usage in a manner that avoids monetary charges.
The following subsections provide a critical survey of a number of proposals
for pricing Internet transport services. As a benchmark for comparing these
proposals, the discussion begins with the theoretical ideal of optimal dynamic
priority pricing. Then auctions (or smart markets), flat-rate pricing, and
voluntary declaration schemes are considered.
Ideal Economic Pricing Proposals
The economic foundations for optimal congestion pricing are deeply routed,
going back at least to Pigou (1928) and Vickrey (1969). To illustrate, consider
the classic case of a congested highway. The travel time between city A and
city B depends on the total volume of traffic. For simplicity, suppose each
citizen makes one trip per morning, but that some people have the option of
making their trip at non-congested times. Typically, travel time is an
increasing function of traffic volume and increases at a rapid rate as the traffic
volume nears the capacity of the highway. In deciding whether to travel during
the congested period, a citizen compares the incremental benefit of travel to
this incremental private time cost, and makes the trip if and only if the former
exceeds the latter.

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From the point of view of the entire community, however, the social cost of
travel time is the sum of every citizen's private time costs. If some citizen
decides to make an extra trip, the additional social cost is the extra travel time
born by all citizens, not just the citizen making the extra trip. Only those
citizens whose incremental benefit from traveling during the congested period
exceeds the incremental social cost should do so, and the others should
postpone their travel to uncongested periods.
Hence, if the price of highway access is zero at all times, too many citizens
will decide to travel during the congested period, because they are not facing
the full social costs. The theoretical economic solution is to set the price of
highway access during the congested period equal to the incremental social
cost—called the optimal congestion toll. Then, by comparing the incremental
benefit of travel with the total cost (congestion toll + private time cost), each
citizen will voluntarily make the socially optimal decision.
In addition to achieving a socially optimal resource allocation for the existing
highway, socially optimal pricing provides correct signals for evaluating
capital investment decisions. Without optimal pricing, there is a bias toward
inefficient capacity. To see this, simply observe that, starting from a free
access policy, social benefits can be increased by implementing optimal
pricing without any additional capital investment, while under free access the
same increase in gross social benefits would require costly capital investment.
Further, with free access an additional million dollars of capacity will generate
fewer social benefits for two main reasons. First, the social benefits are
diminished by the congestion that accompanies increased demand. And
second, the distribution of the new capacity over the highway network will
very likely be inefficient. To see the last point, consider two bottlenecks, one
near an industrial site and the other near a shopping center. Because shopping
trips can be more easily spread over time, optimal congestion tolls could
virtually eliminate the congestion near the shopping center. Because of the
relative inflexibility of work schedules, however, considerable congestion
would remain at the industrial site. With optimal congestion tolls, the new
capacity would be concentrated near the industrial site, and with free access
the new capacity would be
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spread over both sites, thereby producing less total benefits for the entire
community.
A major impediment to congestion tolls for physical highways has been the
cost of administering such a system. Toll booths add considerable delay costs
to travelers, thereby negating the congestion-reducing benefits of the tolls.
Even when technologies are introduced to physical highways, costs of setting
up remote sensors in cars and roadway check points are substantial. When
addressing electronic highways, however, it is technologically feasible to
compute and assess charges with negligible administrative cost. Thus, the
Information Superhighway may be the first real-world instance in which
congestion tolls are practical.
Dynamic Optimal Pricing
This economic theory was first applied to computing environments by Naor

(1969), Mendelson (1985), and Pick and Whinston (1989). Stahl and Whinston
(1991, 1992) and Gupta, Stahl, and Whinston [GSW] (1996) extended these
single-server models to network computing environments and investigated its
practicality by using simulation. Subsequently, GSW (1995a-c) applied their
network models to the Internet.
At the center of the GSW approach is a general mathematical representation of
a computing network, a model of price- and time-sensitive user demand for
services, and a stochastic model of traffic flows and buffers. It shows that a
socially optimal allocation of scarce network resources can be achieved by
imposing optimal priority pricing at each site of potential congestion. The
optimal prices depend on the traffic flow at the site, the size of the packets, the
priority class, and the social cost of time. The latter can be econometrically
estimated from the sensitivity of traffic to actual price and throughput time
fluctuations at the site. Gupta et al. (1997), for example, present a new
non-parametric technique for estimating users' value of time from usage data
in real time, and show that these real-time estimates are sufficiently accurate to
cause no significant loss in the social benefits of optimal pricing (using these
estimates) as compared to the benchmark case with perfect information. In
GSW,
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a practical decentralized method of determining optimal prices in real time is
proposed. A simulation model is constructed that demonstrates the feasibility
of this proposal.
In GSW (1995a-c), the simulation model is calibrated to represent the Internet
and to compare the historical free-access policy with the theoretical optimal
pricing (see fig. 3.5). This calibrated simulation suggests that without effective
management of the Internet (as provided by efficient pricing), congestion and
misallocation of resources could cost the economy tens of billions of dollars of
lost benefits per year. This same simulation also demonstrates that the
potential social gains of optimal pricing, if sought solely from capacity
expansion, could have a capital investment cost exceeding the social gains.
Thus, they argue that congestion is a very real concern and not just a
theoretical fine point.
Figure 3.5 Benefits with different pricing strategies.

In the GSW vision, a typical user deciding whether and when to access an
Internet service would be presented with a menu of options including the
monetary cost and (when relevant) expected throughput time for each option.
The options would specify a priority class, and could also include a
security/anonymity level, minimum guaranteed qualities, and contingency
options such as "submit the service request when the cost falls below $b." The
user would then select the most preferred option. A personalized smart agent
could
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automate the user's decision process based on previously specified user
preferences. Frequently updated price and time information would come from
the user's access provider. Smart agent software could serve this function also,
gathering information from posted prices of transport providers and network
congestion status reports.
The user would not receive a bill from each node and link of the network, but
would rather receive one bill from his access provider for the posted price of
that access provider for the service requested. * In turn, the access provider
would receive a bill from the transport providers to which it is connected based
on posted prices and actual usage. Each network transport provider needs to
keep accounts only for the adjacent providers to which it is connected, not the
individual users. In the vertical direction, each telecommunication carrier
(such as AT&T, MCI, Sprint) need to keep accounts only for the networks
(such as PSI, AlterNet, ANS, and so forth) to which it provides IP transport.
This disaggregated pricing and billing approach mirrors the wholesale pricing
practices in most industries. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the access
providers to charge the user and to cover its costs vis-a-vis the transport
providers.
Capital investment decisions can be greatly improved by the imposition of
optimal priority pricing. First, as demonstrated in GSW (1995), imposition of
priority pricing alone may generate more benefits at much less cost than the
cost of capacity expansion. Second, without priority pricing—because the
physical resource allocation is inefficient—the observed congestion can be a
bad signal about which parts of the infrastructure should be expanded first. By
imposing optimal pricing first, the distribution of network traffic can change
significantly, revealing a different ranking of the bottlenecks. Thus with
optimal pricing, capital investment can be focused on projects that will
produce the greatest benefits.
Although the general model deals with potential congestion anywhere in a
computing network, in practice the most likely sites of congestion are the
56-or-less kbps pipelines and modems to information content providers, their
LANs, and servers. Thus in the near term, while there is still excess capacity
on
* Recall that we are dealing with network transport services only. The user
might well receive bills for the content of the data transported from many
independent content providers.

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the backbone, optimal congestion pricing will be most effective for these
bottlenecks. As data-intensive real-time video uses grow, however, congestion
could very likely become a serious problem on the backbone as well, in which
case optimal priority pricing will become a valuable tool for resource
allocation throughout the Internet.
Static Priority Pricing
Cocchi, Shenker, Estrin, and Zhang—CSEZ—(1993) pose the general problem

of designing a service discipline and a pricing scheme that maximizes
time-averaged user benefits. A service discipline is a mechanism implemented
by the network operators to assign jobs to specific service classes (such as
best-effort, virtual connection, guaranteed minimum delay, and so forth), and a
pricing scheme associates a price (by bandwidth usage) to each service class
(see also Shenker, 1995). CSEZ specifically investigate a standard two-priority
service discipline. Theoretically, there is an optimal allocation of user demands
to each priority, and there are prices for each priority such that each user
facing those prices will voluntarily select the socially optimal priority. Using a
simulation model, CSEZ demonstrate that optimal priority prices can be found
that significantly increase the benefits over a single priority discipline and the
corresponding usage pricing.* CSEZ do not present a computational algorithm
for these prices, so this discussion cannot assess the practical feasibility of that
crucial task. From the mathematical model, it appears that a central authority
would need vast amounts of proprietary information from the users about the
value of each class of service, but the users have incentives to misreport that
information.
These priority prices are "static" in the sense that they do not vary with the
dynamic state of the network. There will be times when the network is badly
congested and high-priority users will be paying too little. Moreover, in
contrast with optimal dynamic pricing by facility, the CSEZ scheme
effectively has a high-priority user paying a premium at every facility even if
only some or none are congested.
*Unlike GSW, CSEZ model the user demands as inelastic with respect to cost;
Shenker (1995) acknowledges the importance of elastic demand.
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The Smart-Market Approach
MacKie-Mason and Varian (1995) have proposed a different approach to

implementing optimal congestion pricing. Instead of using econometric
methods to estimate the social cost of congestion, they propose a mechanism
in which the users have incentives to state their true willingness to pay for
faster service. This, it is claimed, can be accomplished by an
incentive-compatible auction—or smart market.
Suppose that users want a fixed number of jobs processed in a given time
interval. In what order should the jobs be done? Let each person submit a
monetary bid for the right to have his or her job processed. Submitted bids are
ordered from the largest to the smallest, and the jobs are processed in this
order. The price paid by every processed job is the bid of the first job not
processed during the allotted time interval. If all jobs are processed, the price
is zero. It is optimal for every user to bid the true value of the job, no matter
what the other users do. To see this, note that bidding more will increase your
chances of having your job processed only in those cases where the price you
pay turns out to be greater than the true value of your job, and bidding less will
only decrease your chances of having your job processed without affecting the
price you pay.
MacKie-Mason and Varian propose that the Internet operators run smart
markets for packets at every potential site of congestion. Each user includes a
bid in the header of every packet. The network gateways carry out the sorting
at frequent periodic intervals. Under this scheme, every packet would suffer a
one period delay, while packets are being queued and bids sorted, before
proceeding to the normal routing and transmission function. Besides this
deadweight loss of time, there are other theoretical and practical problems with
this approach.
The efficiency properties of the smart market pertain to a static situation in
which (1) all potential users care only about whether their job is done or when,
but not both; (2) all potential users are present at the auction; and (3) the value
of the job is not contingent on any other market. All these assumptions
Page 119
are violated in a dynamic stochastic network. First, potential users value their
jobs and delay time differently, so they care about both whether and when their
job is done. Second, observe that to work in real time, bidding must be
confined to fixed intervals of time; hence, jobs that arrive later, even
nanoseconds later, have no influence on the current price. In contrast, the fully
optimal congestion prices depend on the extra delay imposed on all future
arrivals. This "generational" bias will cause inefficiencies in resource
allocation just as citizens in a republic may squander natural resources because
the unborn cannot vote. Third, the value of having a packet transmitted is
contingent on having other related packets transmitted also. No matter how a
user allocates bids among the thousands of packets that comprise a single
Internet transaction, ex post regret will be rampant. Sometimes almost all
packets will get through without incurring any significant charge, but the last
crucial few will get dropped, so the user will wish the bid had been
concentrated on the packets that encountered congestion. Other times, a few
crucial packets will get dropped first (but after all others have begun their
journey), and the user will have wasted bids on the later, now worthless,
packets. Of course, you can imagine an elaborate accounting system to
ameliorate these problems, or a dynamic bidding process in which each packet
could communicate with the others so as to coordinate their bids as every
packet proceeds through the network. Both of these fixes, however, are clearly
impractical.
Connection-Only and Flat-Rate Pricing
By far the predominant forms of pricing currently in practice are combinations

of connection-only and flat-rate pricing. The connection-only fee is usually
based on the bandwidth of the user's connection for a contracted period of
time, with discounted rates for longer-term contracts (Srinagesh, 1995).
Recently, some frame relay networks began offering a Committed Information
Rate (CIR) on top of a low maximum bandwidth connection fee. Users who
stay within the CIR are guaranteed uninterrupted transport service, but if they
exceed the CIR, they receive best-effort service only. Many customers, to the
surprise of the providers, however, set the CIR to zero (Clark, 1995). More

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over, because the users do not face the full social cost of their usage decisions,
connection fees cannot induce the socially optimal reallocation of demands
during congested times.
In addition to these fixed connection fees, some providers charge a variable fee
based on active connection time. Online service providers usually charge
hourly fees if one goes over the maximum hours allowed monthly. Some
online service providers, such as Netcom, prefer to forgo flat connection fees
altogether in favor of variable fees. Because there is a positive correlation
between connection time and bytes transmitted, one could view connection
time fees as an indirect measure of bandwidth usage. It is important to
recognize that connection time is not an accurate measure of bandwidth usage,
however, and it obviously does not discriminate between a real-time video
session and an e-mail session. Hence it does not confront the user with the
correct social cost of his specific usage.
Flat-rate pricing consists of a fee for a set bandwidth that does not vary with
the level of actual bandwidth usage nor the current state of congestion.
America Online offers flat-rate—a sort of "all you can eat"—pricing, and New
Zealand and Chile have experimented with flat-rate pricing for their
international link. The latter has had a bad experience primarily due to two
disjoint competing networks, which raises the important issue of whether ideal
socially optimal solutions can be implemented in privately owned competing
networks (see the section entitled "Public Policy and Infrastructure").
Because flat-rate pricing is a usage-based scheme, it can potentially improve
the efficiency of the resource allocation over that which would prevail under
non-usage based schemes. The model of GSW could be modified to solve for
the best flat-rate prices by imposing this as a feasibility constraint on the
optimization problem. Alternatively, the GSW simulation model could be
calibrated to represent the time-averaged stochastic flows (over say a month or
a year) and then take the time-averaged optimal congestion tolls as an
approximation to the optimal flat-rate prices. GSW (1995b) did this
time-averaging of the dynamic prices at each server in the network, and then
imposed these prices. They found that per-packet prices for each server did
indeed improve the efficiency of the network, but not nearly to the extent
achieved by dynamic optimal pricing (refer back to fig. 3.5).
Page 121
Part of the reason for the disappointing performance of per-packet pricing by
server was the lack of a component that depends of the size of the "job."
Optimal pricing imposes much higher prices for large jobs than for small jobs,
because large jobs would impose disproportionately longer delays for the users
whose jobs arrive after large jobs. Optimal nonlinear pricing causes a
reallocation away from the large jobs toward the small jobs. Within the
backbone where packet sizes are standardized—for example, in a cell relay
used in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)—shouldn't optimal pricing be a
single per-packet fee? The answer is that the fee should be based on the
number of contiguous packets from a single user sent forward, because that is
the correct measure of how much the user's demand on the system potentially
delays other users.* The packet-switching technology potentially breaks up
contiguous packets into smaller sets, but does not completely eliminate them
(due to the tail-trop first-in-first-out (FIFO) queue discipline). Only when there
is excess capacity on the backbone, will a single per-packet fee be optimal
(and that fee would be zero).
Moreover, the benefits generated in the GSW simulation of per-packet pricing
came from load balancing—the redirection of traffic away from congested
servers toward non-congested servers due to the relevant price signals.
Minimalist flat-rate pricing (for example, Anania and Soloman, 1995) would
establish a single usage fee independent of the nodes and links in the network
that are used, thereby undermining even these load-balancing benefits.* * If
Internet traffic were fairly uniform—characterized by an average flow with a
relatively small variance and standard sized non-contiguous packet streams—
a well-coordinated layered regional system of flat-rate pricing might achieve
much of the maximum attainable efficiency. Internet traffic is anything but
uniform, however. It is characterized by frequent irregular bursts of contiguous
* Imagine you are approaching the ticket office at the entrance to a football
stadium along with 30 other people. Presumably you would rather see them
arriving individually rather than in buses, because if you are "second" in line
there is one person ahead of you in the individual scenario while there are 30
people ahead of you in the bus scenario. In the latter, you have a larger
expected waiting time and a larger variance in waiting time.
** Existing router algorithms achieve some load-balancing to the extent that
they can route traffic around congested nodes and links, but they cannot
change the final destinations. In contrast, pricing that depends on the
destination server can induce users to redirect their demands.
Page 122
packets, and the variance in flow tends to increase more than proportional to
the average flow. In such an environment, there are huge potential efficiency
gains from better resource allocation during and between bursty periods (Edell
et al., 1994). These gains can only be realized by dynamic optimal pricing.
Voluntary User Declarations
Bohn et al. (1993) propose a classification of services and assignment of

priorities to those classes, asking individual users to voluntarily choose the
appropriate classification. This choice would be recorded in the Type of
Service (TOS) field of the IP header, but prices would not depend on the
choice. The effectiveness of this scheme would depend on each user selecting
the correct category, even though he has clear incentives to always choose the
class associated with the highest priority. Recognizing this incentive
compatibility problem, Bohn et al. suggest that occasional inspection of the
packet streams and TOS field coupled with penalties for false classification
could be used to enforce compliance. It is not clear, however, how such an
inspection/enforcement system would be implemented nor how effective it
would be. Others (for example, Kelly, 1995) have proposed that optimal prices
could be posted but not charged, and that these "virtual" prices could act as
guidelines that induce users to voluntarily modify their demands to bring about
an efficient allocation of network resources.
It is extremely naive to assume that individual users will act in the best interest
of the whole system when that conflicts with his or her private interests.
Tragedies of the commons are very real phenomena, and the Internet could
become another tragedy.
Synopsis
This discussion has surveyed the range of proposals for infrastructure pricing
and priorities to solve the ever present congestion problems on the Internet.
The GSW proposal for dynamic congestion tolls is close to the ideal economic
solution and purports to be implementable in real time, whereas the proposals

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based on static models and flat-rate pricing are unlikely to significantly
improve the efficiency of the Internet.
There are, however, practical and political barriers to implementing the GSW
proposal. First, gone are the days of the government controlled Internet. The
current and future Internet is a private enterprise endeavor consisting of a large
number of infrastructure owners, each in business to make money. In the
presence of a negative externality (such as congestion), it is a well-known
economic result that the private market outcome will not be socially optimal,
and the socially optimal outcome cannot be achieved by private markets.
Just what the private market outcome will be remains an open economic
question. If the current state is any indication of the future, it appears unlikely
that, in a competitive outcome, the private infrastructure owners will charge
anything close to optimal congestion tolls, implying that the Internet will
become a "tragedy of the commons," significantly eroding the potential
benefits of electronic commerce. Moreover, in the current "anti-regulatory"
climate, it is unlikely that governments will step in to protect the public
interest.
In the world of private intranets, however, optimal congestion tolls may come
to be. Intranets are owned by a corporation and for the exclusive use of
corporate users to ensure maximum security of sensitive corporate
information. As such, the corporation has every incentive to impose optimal
congestion tolls internally to achieve efficient utilization of its own resources.
3.5.Public Policy and Infrastructure

In the face of such dramatic growth of the Internet, an in-depth understanding
of the ownership structure of network and service providers, the pricing
policies of those entities, and public regulatory policies are critical to the
realization of the potential benefits. Non-competitive structures, inefficient
pricing, and misguided public policy could foster a tragedy of the commons.
The ownership structure of the network determines the kinds of public policies
pertinent in the obvious sense that with public ownership
Page 124
pricing policies could be imposed directly, while with private ownership
regulatory policies are needed to influence pricing.
One very important public policy issue is equity: Should some classes of users
(such as students, teachers, the poor, and so forth) be given special treatment to
ensure equitable or fair access privileges. Because pricing is seen by many as a
barrier to access for deserving potential users, this issue must be addressed.
Partly because the Internet has historically been a free good, and partly
because everyone likes a "free lunch," there is an entrenched interest group
opposed to any form of usage-based pricing. Although it may appear that there
is a dilemma between equity and efficiency, there is a straightforward
economic solution: Optimal pricing should be imposed, and user classes
deemed by the government to warrant subsidies should be awarded grants to
supplement their own budgets for Internet activities.
Public Policy for a Publicly Owned Network
Obviously the goal of public policy should be to promote the full realization of
the potential benefits of the network for the society as a whole. Although easy
to state, this goal could be distorted by special interest groups desiring to
exploit proprietary technologies and to appropriate potential public rents for
private pockets. Nevertheless, because of the extensive externalities associated
with the Internet and electronic commerce, a strong case can be made for a
strong public role.
In countries where the network infrastructure as well as the access providers
are governmental entities, the direct approach would be to establish a
legislative mandate for the efficient operation of the network for the common
good by means that include appropriate pricing. Recognizing the longevity of
the infrastructure (fiber optics and cables), debt-financing of the required
capital investment would be necessary and justified. Bandwidth usage fees
should not be used to cover fixed costs—that would induce a loss of potential
benefits and retard the growth of the network community. Usage fees should
be based only on variable operating costs and congestion costs. Fixed costs
should be recovered via connection fees and general taxation.
Page 125
The public would need to guard against the possibility that the upper-level
management of the network authority might attempt to distort prices or restrict
capacity in ways that increase revenues, perhaps using some of this to increase
its own compensation and benefits directly and indirectly.
Even if the infrastructure is owned and operated by the government, there will
undoubtedly be many cases in which access and content services are provided
by private entities. Because users will interact through the access providers,
the pricing policies of these providers will directly impact the performance of
the network. Some access providers, for example, may attempt to attract
customers by smoothing the temporal fluctuations in its costs and offering
customers more stable prices. Excess smoothing, however, will undermine the
capability of dynamic pricing to guide the resource allocation decisions toward
the socially optimal levels. Thus, even with optimal pricing at the
infrastructure level, it may be necessary to exercise regulatory oversight over
the access providers. The issues involved in such oversight are discussed next.
Public Policy for a Privately Owned Network
In the presence of externalities (such as congestion), it is well known that

private market outcomes are not socially optimal. Beyond this, economists
know very little about how a privately owned Internet might function. The
bulk of the theoretical results are confined to the unrealistic case of identical
users, in which case two-part tariffs can support the social optimum.
Intuitively, a monopolist who charges an access fee and a usage fee, because it
can extract all the user surplus with the access fee, has the incentive to
maximize user surplus by charging a usage fee equal to the optimal congestion
toll (Oi, 1971). Further, even if there are several (identical) network providers
(and identical consumers), they will choose a usage fee equal to the optimal
congestion toll (Scotchmer, 1985).
Unfortunately, these results vanish in a world with heterogeneous users. If
users differ in how they value delays, for example, the social optimum may
involve segregation of users by value of time into subnetworks, but some of
the subnetwork owners could have incentives to upset this optimal segregation.
It

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is not hard to construct simple examples for which there does not exist a stable
pricing equilibrium among competing firms.
Given the interoperability requirements of the Internet, the number of network
competitors are likely to be finite and of non-negligible size. In other words,
the classic assumption of many small price-taking suppliers will be far from
true. Instead, the Internet infrastructure market will be better described as a
"game" with a small number of strategic players.
One of the most productive areas of theoretical research in economics over the
past 20 years has been in "game theory." Recently, Rutgers University
sponsored a conference on economics, game theory and the Internet
(http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/workshops/economics), to foster more applications
of game theory to Internet issues.
The game among network competitors has some characteristics of "Prisoners'
Dilemma" (see Note). Everyone would be better off if each network manager
adopted optimal dynamic pricing, but each has a strong private incentive to
lower prices to attract more customers. The outcome is that everyone
over-utilizes the public resource and is much worse off.
Prisoners' Dilemma
In this classic game, two prisoners are being held in connection
with a crime. The sheriff has enough evidence to get a
misdemeanor conviction with a one year jail term. The sheriff
puts each prisoner in isolation and proposes a deal: "If you
confess and supply further evidence to implicate your accomplice,
I will recommend leniency for you. If your accomplice has
confessed, I will recommend a 5-year sentence rather than the
10-year sentence that goes with the felony conviction, and if your
accomplice has not confessed, I will recommend probation
without jail for you, while your accomplice will get the full
10-year sentence."
In the game, a prisoner is better off confessing no matter what he
thinks his accomplice will do. Hence, the game outcome has both
prisoners confessing and serving a 5-year sentence. Note that both
would have been better off if neither confessed, but there is no
way of guaranteeing this "cooperative" outcome, because each
prisoner has a strong private incentive to fink on the other.
Page 127
This classic "Prisoners' Dilemma" captures the critical features of many public
resource problems such as grazing ranges and ocean fisheries. Each player
would be better off if he restricted his use to a moderate (socially optimal)
level, but each has a strong private incentive to increase his use. The result is a
tragedy of the commons: the overutilization of the public resource and a loss
for everyone.
Thus, game theory appears to be ideally suited to studying this market game.
Unfortunately, beyond rather simplistic models such as the "Prisoners'
Dilemma," classic game theory has virtually no predictive power in this
complex dynamic environment. Even an extremely simplified competitive
network model may have no pure-strategy non-cooperative equilibrium. On
the other hand, permitting intertemporal strategies unleashes the "Folk
Theorems" of game theory, which say that virtually any behavior is possible.
In this environment, an active public policy involving price regulation or
Pigouvian taxes to avoid a tragedy of the commons may be necessary. In the
classic common resource situation, the imposition of a public fee (or tax)
equaling the marginal social cost of use will avoid the tragedy. Such a fee is
equivalent to optimal congestion tolls. The simulation results of GSW suggest
that the computation of optimal taxes is feasible.
Because the environment is so complex, however, the optimal public policy is
not obvious. Future research needs to develop a model of the Internet that
contains the essential and important characteristics of the Internet, which can
serve as a test bed for conducting policy studies. How will alternative
regulations or taxes affect the industry structure, the pricing schemes, the
pattern of use across service and user classes, congestion, social benefits, and
investment incentives? Simulation is a promising practical way to pursue these
questions.
3.6.Summary
If you were to consider only physical wires and cables, the Internet would be
nearly indistinguishable from existing telecommunications networks. In fact,
Page 128
most of the Internet traffic is routed through the same pipelines used for voice,
fax, and data transmissions. Rather, the Internet's strengths as a
communications medium and for electronic commerce purposes lie in the way
traffic is managed or routed and in its open interfacing with disparate networks
that exist and are coming into existence. Aided by computers, software, and
multimedia technologies, the familiar wire, cable, and wireless networks have
become the information infrastructure of the future.
However, while technologies are perfected and more cables are strung, the key
issue in managing this infrastructure and maximizing its utility remains a
problem of efficient resource allocation in the face of congestion. The Internet
infrastructure has experienced a cycle of congestion and network upgrades:
from the 56 kbps backbone in 1986 to the 1.5 mbps T1 upgrade by 1989, and
to 45 mbps T3 networks by the early 1990s. Now, each fiber-optic cable
network, the latest upgrade, can carry 20 or 30 times more traffic than a T3
network can. Because many fiber-optic networks are built redundantly by
laying several cables side by side, many predict an end to the bandwidth
scarcity. But congestion is a problem in the last mile, which represents the
major portion of networking costs. For this reason, the last mile still consists of
copper wires and coaxial cables. Even for fiber-optic backbones, what seems
to be an unimaginably large bandwidth will cause severe bottlenecks in short
time because of corresponding or outpacing growth in demand. Experience
with microprocessors amply demonstrates that possibility. Efficient pricing
mechanisms can present effective solutions to problems of both
congestion—by distributing traffic efficiently—and upgrades—by directing
investments to where they can most effectively increase social welfare.
Congestion threatens the future of electronic commerce, turning the Internet
into a tragedy of the commons. The ideal economic solution is to charge
optimal dynamic congestion tolls. Private infrastructure owners, interested in
profits rather than social benefits, however, are unlikely to voluntarily impose
optimal congestion tolls. What the private market outcome will be is uncertain.
More research is needed into the impact of alternative public policies on
congestion, infrastructure investment, and social benefits.

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Finally, new forces are coming into play, affecting the level of competition among
telecommunication service providers, with serious implications for regulatory
policies and consumer protection. Foremost of these forces is the convergence in
infrastructure, especially in the last mile where users gain access to the Internet,
where a long list of companies—including telephone companies, cable system
operators, Internet service providers, long distance carriers, wireless operators,
satellite systems, and computer hardware and software vendors—face head-on
competition due to the disappearing market boundaries. The effects of this
convergence on market performance and government policies will be discussed in
Chapter 11 along with other policy-related issues.
Page 130
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Economics, University of Texas; also in New Directions in Computational
Economics, W. W. Cooper and A.B. Whinston, eds., Kluwer Academic Publishers,
Netherlands, pp. 175_189, 1994.
Scotchmer, S., 1985. "Two-Tier Pricing of Shared Facilities in a Free-Entry
Equilibrium." Rand Journal of Economics (http://www.rand.org/misc/rje/), 16:
456_472.
Vickrey, W., 1969. "Congestion Theory and Transport Investment." American
Economic Review Proceedings, 59: 251_260.
Page 133

Further Readings on Game Theory
For a general introduction, see Gibbons, R., 1992, Game Theory for Applied
Economists. Priceton, N.J.: Princton University Press. See also Fudenberg, D., and
J. Tirole, 1989, "Noncooperative Game Theory for Industrial Organization: An
Introduction and Overview," in Schmalensee, R., and R. Willig, eds., Handbook of
Industrial Organization, Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Technical references to repeated games and the Folk Theorem include the following:
● Abreu, D., 1988. "Towards a Theory of Discounted Repeated Games."
Econometrica, 56: 383_396.
● Friedman, J., 1971. "Non-Cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames." Review
of Economic Studies, 38: 1_12.
● Fudenberg, D., and E. Maskin, 1986. "The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games
with Discounting or with Incomplete Information." Econometrica, 54:
533_556.
Internet Resources
The Internet Networking Infrastructure
An excellent list of links related to technical and economic resources about the
Internet network infrastructure is the Network Economics site of the School of
Information Management and Systems, UC-Berkeley at
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/infoecon/Networks.html.
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The proposed high-speed Internet backbone is detailed at
http://www.gov.mci.net/vBNS.
Theoretically, regional networks are connected to the backbone at various network
access points (NAPs) to this high-speed Internet. NAP maps are available at
http://www.cerf.net/cerfnet/about/interconnects.html.
The NSFNET backbone that began in 1987 was retired in 1995. See a final report on
the NSFnet: NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking by K.D. Frazer,
available at http://www.merit.edu/nsfnet/final.report/. An interesting history of the
NSFnet is given by S.R. Harris and E. Gerich, available at
http://www.merit.edu/nsfnet/.retire.html.
Many sites related to the Internet infrastructure are listed in Telecom Information
Resources on the Internet, maintained by J. MacKie-Mason, available at
http://www.spp.umich.edu/telecom/telecom-info.html.
Domain Name Registration
Find instructions on how to register domain names at

http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Domain_Registration/.
Internic Network Solutions' Domain Name Dispute Policy proposal is available at

http://rs.internic.net/domain-info/internic-domain-6.html. The National Science
Foundation is currently funding the domain name registration process, but plans to
leave it entirely to Network Solutions beginning in 1997.
MBONE (Multicast Backbone)
Imagine that you send a large file to 100 of your friends. The same file will travese
the Internet 100 times, eating up its bandwidth. The MBONE was developed to cope
with that problem, by overlaying a network that can distribute (known as mroute)
live audio and video data in a way to minimize duplicating the same data while in
transit.

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Resources about the MBONE can be found at the MBONE Information web,
available at http://www.mbone.com. It also contains an MBONE FAQ.
Recent books about the MBONE include the following:

● Kumar, V., 1995. MBone: Interactive Multimedia On The Internet.
Macmillan Publishing.
● Savetz, K., N. Randall, and Y. Lepage, 1996. MBone: Multicasting
Tomorrow's Internet. IDG Books. Its table of contents with some text is
available at http://www.northcoast.com/savetz/mbone/toc.html.
IETF IP Multicasting Proposals
IETF working groups are developing standards to support Internet

multicasting, such as Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) that concerns
bandwidth management and Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) with
sequencing and transport of data streams.
For the RSVP specification, see 1994 IETF draft proposal available at
http://netweb.usc.edu/estrin/RSVP/rsvpspec.txt.
Various reports on RTP by IETF Audio Video Transport Working Group are
available at http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/ids.by.wg/avt.html.
See also the multicast routing information page by Cisco Systems at
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/614/17.html.
Broadband Online Services
For information regarding ISDN and ADSL, see ISDN information page at
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/isdn.
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Cable-based broadband online services offer a high-bandwidth connection 100
times faster than ISDN service. Time Warner Entertainment started its
RoadRunner cable modem service in 1996, first in Ohio. @Home
(http://www.home.net) is offered by a group of cable system operators
including Tele-Communications, Inc., Comcast, and Cox communications.
For information about RoadRunner, see
http://www.gayson.com/sschlos/linerunner.html. An unofficial RoadRunner
FAQ is available at http://members.tripod.com/~tlarrow/rrfaq.htm.
An extensive list of resources and links about cable modem is at
http://rpcp.mit.edu/~gingold/cable.

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CHAPTER 4
Quality Uncertainty and Market

Efficiency
The efficiency of a market critically depends on the amount and the nature of
information—about products and consumer tastes—available to sellers and
buyers. When market agents are not endowed with proper information, the
market may be inefficient or even fail to function. When the quality of a
product is unknown, for example, consumers may be unwilling to pay for it.
Sellers try to convey such information by using advertising and product
promotions which, however, require some knowledge about the preference and
the taste of consumers to be effectively carried out. If market players have
complete information about products and about each other, transactions will
simply be a matter of meeting and exchanging goods. A seller announces a
new product, manufactured according to consumers' specifications, on the
World Wide Web, and all interested consumers will purchase instantly at the
price posted—no marketing campaigns, no inventories and waste in
production, no product returns by unsatisfied consumers, no intermediaries for
distribution, and so on. The electronic marketplace, however, will not be such
a blindingly efficient market because the uncertainty about quality will linger
on despite the abundance of information. This chapter introduces readers to
economic reasons why a market may fail completely due to the lack of
information about products or consumer tastes. Technologies alone do not
eliminate these
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reasons, but new and innovative market mechanisms may be available in
electronic commerce to counter them.
This discussion begins with the quality uncertainty problem, because the
nature of digital products makes this problem more severe in electronic
commerce. Digital products are mostly experience goods, whose quality
becomes known only after consumption, and many information goods are
purchased only once. These characteristics leave sellers without a sure way of
convincing customers about the value of their products, and consumers
without the willingness to purchase. In comparison, for a broad range of
products known as search goods, the lack of information may be countered by
simple measures such as advertising. Search goods are products whose quality
may be learned without actually using them. A visual inspection of a product,
or an advertisement, suffices to judge its quality. For experience goods,
however, quality is learned only from experience—from actually using the
product. Many digital products are this type of experience goods, for which
even an excess amount of advertising and product information is inadequate to
convince buyers of quality. Consumers take the risk of trying out if the
learning from experience helps future purchases. But, when a product is used
only once, such risk-taking may not be justified.
The uncertainty about product quality is also confounded by network
congestion. A timely information may be sent out by a seller, but its quality in
terms of timeliness critically depends on how fast it reaches the buyers. Under
today's Internet infrastructure and pricing, product sellers often do not have
control over this important aspect of quality. Because consumers' reluctance to
adopt usage-based pricing for Internet services stems partly from the
uncertainty about network quality for access and delivery, efficient
infrastructure pricing also depends on assuring quality.
The following section, "Economics of the Lemons Market," reviews the
economic reasons behind the ramifications of quality uncertainty. This section
then goes on to examine various ways in which sellers in the electronic
marketplace attempt to convey product information to consumers. They range
from advertising to the use of third parties such as industry organizations,
government agencies, and consumer advocacy groups. The objective of section
4.2
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entitled "Information Channels in Electronic Commerce" is to evaluate
whether these mechanisms will be efficient—and sufficient—in electronic
markets. The section entitled "Quality and Intermediaries" elaborates on the
role of an intermediary as a quality guarantor. The incentive for the
intermediary to be truthful is the profit opportunity. Although marketing on the
Internet seems to favor a distribution channel with less and less intermediary
steps, intermediaries in electronic commerce may be essential in enhancing
market efficiency as they become trusted sources for product information.
Finally, this chapter considers electronic resale markets as an alternative to
intermediaries. Although the profit motive of an intermediary is what makes it
trustworthy, a simple message exchange system, such as a computer bulletin
board or a secondary marketplace, can duplicate the same incentive structure
of an intermediary.
4.1. Economics of the Lemons Market
The specifics of a product are hard to judge on the Internet unless one
physically connects to the web page and checks it out. Even the physical
presence or the identity of a seller is difficult to verify in the electronic
marketplace. An electronic store—a web storefront, for example—can be
constructed in a day and could disappear the next day. Technologies for
certifying and authenticating the identity of a seller on the Internet would help
to lower the risk of fraud or fly-by-night operation, but the uncertainty about
the seller's product itself remains. One digital product vendor, First Virtual
Holdings (http://www.fv.com), offers its customers the right to refuse payment
after receiving a product if they are not satisfied. But, this gentler approach is
prone to abuses if one is determined not to pay. Sellers will soon exit the
market—finding no customers—and for this reason, First Virtual's policy is to
terminate a customer's membership if one repeatedly refuses to pay. Then, how
is it possible to avoid a market failure when product quality is not known?
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The severity of the problem is in general lower when purchases are repeated
because consumers learn about the quality and the seller has an incentive to
maintain the reputation to continue sales. But reputation is a poor guide for
products with a limited life span or when a seller is not a long-run market
player. Already today, a multitude of both sellers and buyers want to sell and
buy digital products via web pages but cannot agree on how much a product is
worth. In the wake of this type of uncertainty, the market becomes inefficient
or disappears, as the following example shows.
Suppose that Alice is looking for a quotation to use as an opening line in her
speech at the Joint Conference of Economists and Poets. The quotation Alice
wants must be relevant to both economists and poets. Alice is willing to pay
$10 for a good quotation and $1 for a bad one. Bob runs a web machine that
automatically produces a good quotation, at a cost of $7, based on keywords
typed by consumers. Customers must pay $10 for a quotation prior to typing
the keywords. Charlie runs a similar web store, but he does not have a
sophisticated search-and-generate program. Instead, his machine just gives out
a quotation at random, at the average cost of $1. Nevertheless, Charlie mimics
all aspects of Bob's web site, including price per quote, web site appearance,
and other sales policies.
If Alice has the information about Bob and Charlie, she would just go to Bob's
web site. Without the knowledge, however, Alice expects to pay $5.50 on
average, given that there is an equal chance of getting either a good or a bad
quotation. If many Alices are in the market for quotations, the average
expected price becomes the market price. It is lower than the $7 required for
Bob to survive, however. Bob folds his business, leaving only Charlie in the
market. But Alice will never get a good quotation and is not willing to pay the
expected price of $5.50. Instead, the market price becomes $1—the price for a
bad quotation. Assuming that Charlie's cost is also $1, he breaks even and is
indifferent between remaining as a quotation seller and exiting the market.
This phenomenon is called the lemons problem because only "lemons" remain
in the market when the product quality is unknown. If consumer willingness to
pay for a bad quotation is zero, the market for quotation disappears
completely.

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The lemons problem, first discussed by Akerlof (1970), is one example of
adverse selection where bad products drive out good products. Similarly, a
firm insuring properties such as houses and automobiles may find that many of
its clients do not take adequate measures to protect their properties against
theft and accidents. But without a means to distinguish careful clients from
careless clients, the insurance premium—calculated based on the average
risk—will apply to all clients. "Good" clients withdraw from the insurance
market because they consider the insurance premium to be too high, while
`bad' clients remain. With only careless customers, the firm will have to exit
the market in the face of piling insurance claims. The problem of disappearing
markets occurs because of the asymmetric nature of information—that is, both
parties do not have the same information. If Alice knew who to trust or if the
insurance firm had knowledge about consumer behaviors, there might be some
reasonable prices to complete market transactions.
Without such knowledge, both Alice and the firm must seek the information in
other ways. One important method is to send a signal: Bob may send a signal
to Alice that his quotations are always good, or consumers may provide an
insurance firm with some evidence—signals—proving that they are low risk.
Signals, however, may not be truthful. One alternative, discussed in detail in
Chapter 8, is an incentive-compatible mechanism that aims to solve this
problem by devising a decentralized market design that gives participants an
incentive to truthfully reveal their information. The insurance company may
offer two different policies with varying amounts of deductibles and
co-payments, for example, so that high-risk consumers buy a different policy
from one aimed at low-risk consumers.
Price as a Signal for Quality
Consumers often think that the price of a product is a sign post of its quality.
The effectiveness of price as a quality signal is limited by the fact that a
low-quality firm may simply charge a high price for its product. In general,
prices will convey some but not all the information on product quality. Cooper
and Ross (1984) suggest that, because prices may convey information
adequately,
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two factors may actually discourage the entry of dishonest firms. The first is
the number of informed consumers versus uninformed consumers. A
high-quality product commands a high price because informed consumers are
willing to pay the price. Thus uninformed consumers are informed about the
quality through the signal—price—sent by informed consumers. The more
informed consumers there are, the more difficult it is for a dishonest firm to
cheat, and therefore prices do become an efficient indicator of quality. Cooper
and Ross, however, do not specify how informed consumers are informed in
the first place (discussed in more detail in the section entitled "Information
Channels in Electronic Commerce").
The second factor determining the signaling efficiency of prices is the cost
structure. As more firms enter a market, each firm's share of the market
shrinks, and if the cost of production is high at low output, dishonest firms
may find it unprofitable to enter. Note that dishonest firms can sell only to
uninformed consumers, while honest firms continue to sell to informed
consumers. Thus there will be more cheaters if a dishonest firm can make a
profit with a small number of sales. Counteracting this, the entry by dishonest
firms is discouraged if a large sunk cost is required. Intuitively, this is
consistent with the observation that ripoffs are more prevalent for a low-cost,
small-item product than for a high-cost, large-item product such as a database.
Once again, however, the Cooper and Ross model assumes that there are some
informed consumers. If all consumers are uninformed, prices alone cannot
convey any information about product quality.
For digital products whose fixed costs are large compared to variable costs, the
preceding result implies that fly-by-night operators will be discouraged to
enter the market. This certainly seems a reasonable assertion for large
databases and computer software. Suppose that a word processing program
costs $1 million to develop. As the number of sales increase, its average cost
declines along with its break-even price. If there is only one customer, for
example, its price must be $1 million plus variable costs. If there are one
million customers, the firm can sell a copy at slightly over $1 and still make
profits. If the product is of low quality, the number of sales declines and its
price must be raised to break even. As a result, low-quality products have a
lower chance to survive.
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For products with low fixed costs, however, fly-by-night operations may be
profitable if some consumers are not informed.
Remedies for the Lemons Problem
Because the lemons problem results from asymmetric information—that is,

buyers don't have the same information as sellers—the obvious remedy is to
inform, and convince, buyers about the product quality. Numerous
mechanisms enable one to do this.
First, sellers can convey the information to consumers through informative
advertising, by building reputation, or by offering credible guarantees or
warranties. To be effective, the key element in all these methods is
credibility—whether it is the credibility of advertising, reputation, or
guarantees.
Second, industry groups, governments, or consumer advocacy groups can
provide quality information by establishing quality standards or certifications.
These third parties, however, often set only minimum quality standards.
Because of this, quality standards often amount to minimum standards for
compatibility and interoperability, which may indicate acceptability of a
product but not the level of quality.
Third, trusted third parties, rather than setting quality standards, can provide
detailed quality information by comparing each brand as does the Consumers'
Union, which publishes Consumer Reports. Similarly, a trusted mechanic may
examine a used car to determine whether it is a lemon. The common criterion
is that third parties need to be neutral, trustworthy, and equipped with a
necessary expertise to evaluate products. Consumers' Union is an example of
public third parties that are often publicly funded non-profit organizations or
behave in similar ways. A trusted mechanic is an example of private third
parties who offer information service for profit. Public third parties often lack
funds and organization to offer product evaluations for all products and
occasions. On the other hand, private third parties may become efficient
information sellers who resolve quality uncertainty. Especially, this role as an
information intermediary can be carried out with minimum costs to consumers
when they are also product resellers (as discussed in more detail later in this
chapter).

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Finally, a different type of intermediary—a resale market such as a UseNet
newsgroup or a public bulletin board—may carry out essentially the same
function as a product reseller. Instead of the intermediary signaling quality to
consumers as a trusted third party, one can open a resale market where
dissatisfied buyers would try to resell the lemons or post quality information.
If this resale market is efficient, then there are no low-quality sellers
masquerading as high-quality sellers. The simple existence of the "punishing"
mechanism—a resale market or a forum for efficient information
exchange—discourages cheaters. A thorny issue in allowing consumer
reselling, however, is the debate about the first sale doctrine—the doctrine that
allows consumers to sell, rent, or lease a product after they pay for it. For some
products, preventing consumers from reselling is a pertinent issue for
copyright protection because resale markets can eliminate producer's future
sales (see Chapter 5, "Economic Aspects of Copyright Protection"). If just one
copy is put up for resale and exchanges hands rapidly on the Internet, for
example, the original producer may find no buyers the next day.
If producers or original sellers are not required to provide full refunds
whenever a customer is dissatisfied, however, consumers may desire to have a
similar leverage against ripoffs. A "forsale" newsgroup is an efficient
mechanism to solve the lemons problem without setting up artificial regulatory
restraints such as quality standards, market regulation, and various
consumer-protection initiatives. To protect the producer's market, reselling
may be limited to first-time buyers—those who bought a product from its
producer. Buyers either sell back (that is, return) to the producer, or resell in
the second-hand market, but products purchased in the resale market cannot be
resold.
Technologies to limit resale to initial purchasers are readily available.
Authentification technologies such as encryption, digital signature, hashing,
and time stamping (see Chapter 9, "Financial Intermediaries and Electronic
Commerce") enable content providers to include information about both the
copyright holder and the primary purchaser. When the latter wants to resell,
the document can be returned to the copyright holder or to a third party to be
stamped with that information. Any further unauthorized resale can be verified
by examining the sales record. Although there still is much uncertainty
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about whether consumers should be allowed to rent or sell a digital
product—although allowed under the first sale doctrine—some products such
as time-dependent goods have little resale value. In this case, buyers and
sellers need a mechanism such as repeated purchases (via subscription or
reputation-building) to resolve the quality uncertainty problem. For products
that can be resold, reselling could be an alternative to a return policy.
4.2. Information Channels in Electronic Commerce

Information about product quality can be disseminated through three types of
information channels to counter the lemons problem. The first group of
channels, for example, in the form of advertising, is initiated by the sellers.
The second group of channels is initiated by the consumers through, for
instance, product searches and comparison shopping aimed at discovering
product quality. The third group of channels is mediated by third parties such
as retailers and consumer advocacy groups who evaluate products and offer
their information to consumers. Although this chapter's primary focus is this
third group of channels involving intermediaries—Chapters 6 and 7 focus on
the first and second types of channels—this chapter briefly reviews all the
various information channels and investigates their effectiveness in lowering
quality uncertainty in the following sections.
Sellers Provide Product Information
The primary mechanism used by companies to provide information on their

products to potential customers is the web page. Conventional advertisements
are sent to consumers, for example, by using e-mail to attract them to their web
sites. CommerceNet (http://www.commerce.net), a non-profit consortium,
listed over 40,000 Internet storefronts in operation as of October, 1996 in its
Commercial Sites Index, now out of service due to a growing number of
for-profit indexes. The majority of these web storefronts were geared to make
certain that the company had a presence on the Internet. A Grant Thornton
Page 146
survey found that 25 percent of firms surveyed had web storefronts in 1997,
almost double the rate from a year ago.
But beyond mere presence, web storefronts combine advertising, marketing,
and sales functions with advantages not offered by traditional advertising and
marketing media. These advantages include the following:
● The incremental cost per audience for a web page can be measured in a
reliable manner unlike the cost required to reach a marginal audience via
printed or broadcast media.
● Unlike physical storefronts, web sites offer 24-hour continuous support
for customers using computerized processes.
● All web storefronts are on a level field in terms of size and geographical
reach. Both small and large firms can conduct business globally despite
differences in capital and location.
● Finally, a web storefront offers an efficient conduit for customer
feedback and interactions that can be managed, responded to, and
analyzed with the help of sophisticated computer programs and
technologies.
As the number of Internet users increases even more, these advantages will
become compelling enough to force companies to refocus their marketing and
advertising strategies to better capitalize on the unique opportunities.
Although most web pages simply offer a brief description about the company,
personnel, and products, more sophisticated web page management strategies
are being developed. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), for example, is
one large company that has emphasized Internet commerce as an important
revenue source. On its product and service information page
(http://www.digital.com/info/info.home.html), DEC offers an indexed and
searchable database of product descriptions as well as buyer guides,
performance reports, press releases, newsletters, and information to orient new
visitors (see fig. 4.1). For those whose needs are not met, DEC accepts
requests for additional information, providing interactive support for
consumers. DEC's web store strategy is consistent with the general notion that
the "push" model of advertising based on one-to-many broadcasting is neither
effective nor accepted on the Internet. Instead, to avoid being attacked by
angry recipients of pushed
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messages, web page content must be geared to meet the needs of consumers
who actively seek out product information and visit companies' web sites on
their own initiative, while pushed messages are limited to offering pointers to
these web pages. These disadvantages of push models, however, can be
minimized by customizing pushed messages as in PointCast's personalized
news service (http://www.pointcast.com). (See Chapter 8, "Product Choices
and Discriminatory Pricing," for a detailed discussion on product
customization.) In the end, customized messages that are "pushed" are quite
similar to "pulled" messages.
Figure 4.1 Digital's product information page.

Do firms have an incentive to provide such detailed product information to
consumers? Eaton and Grossman (1986) conclude that consumers do not
benefit from the information that firms reveal because competing firms end up
raising prices. In their model, firms sell horizontally differentiated products
(that is, different brands or colors of the same product), and are considering
whether to reveal information about their products. Suppose that Alice and
Bob are selling white umbrellas. Charlie, a new entrant to the umbrella market,
decides to produce yellow umbrellas to cater to color-conscious or
safety-minded consumers. Now that umbrellas have different colors,
consumers must be informed about the product's color. By doing so,
differentiated products

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segment the umbrella market, and consequently sellers can increase prices to
extract the benefit from having products that match consumer tastes better. In
this setting, sellers gain from revealing information and matching consumers
with products. For search goods whose quality consumers can determine based
on seller-provided information, firms will have a greater incentive to provide
information.
The bottom line regarding the effectiveness of seller-provided product
information in resolving quality uncertainty is whether consumers trust sellers.
As mentioned earlier, for goods that consumers buy repeatedly, firms can
develop a reputation for quality and trustworthiness. Offering free samples and
try outs is another way. But for single purchase items such as durable goods,
firms have to rely on other measures to convince consumers about their
quality. One such method can be to provide consumers with "trial" products to
win their trust.
Freeware, Shareware, and Other Promotions
Many products classified as "experience goods" cannot be adequately

evaluated by descriptive words or pictures. For these products, a try out or a
test drive is offered so that consumers can evaluate the quality themselves.
Free Products Online
Software developers commonly offer trial products in several forms. Freeware

and public domain programs are ones provided free by software developers.
Shareware programs are those you can use for a specified period of time for
free before you decide to pay if you like the software. Often commercial
programs are distributed as demo versions with some key features disabled.
These "free" programs are often archived in various sites accessible by
anonymous FTP. One of the largest collections of freeware is also available
via the web at Jumbo! (http:// www.jumbo.com/), as shown in figure 4.2,
which offers almost 73,000 shareware and freeware programs. (See Chapter 6,
"Signaling Quality and Product Information," Internet Resources section for a
list of shareware sites.) Both the World Wide Web and the Internet are also
used to solicit user testing. Digital Equipment Corporation in 1994, for
example,
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allowed potential customers to test drive its applications in the Alpha AXP
server for web and Internet applications. Thousands of interested customers
had a chance to preview, evaluate, and make comments on the product,
making the test drive a big marketing success.
Similar to software vendors, information sellers offer free products and
services for consumers to try out. The reasons for offering free products and
services are far from altruistic. First, unlike printed books that buyers can
browse at a bookstore, in digital commerce, there is little difference between
browsing and buying because files must be transferred even for browsing.
Once downloaded, sellers cannot obligate consumers to pay in an effective
way. Because of the quality uncertainty, buyers may not be willing to pay
upfront, or the downloaded product may be of too small a value to implement
a payment system other than a micropayment system being proposed. Second,
digital products are susceptible to unauthorized reproduction. Hence, any
product consumers are allowed to browse essentially becomes public domain.
Then, how do sellers offer "browsing opportunities" for consumers who are
interested but will not buy unless they have some idea about the product? Free
products, excerpts, and free basic services provide the opportunity for
consumers to browse, try out, and learn about the product.
Figure 4.2 Jumbo! web site offering freeware and shareware programs.
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The Economics of Try-Outs
Allowing consumers to try out a product prior to purchase is effective when

true valuations become known only after consuming the product. A firm may
profit from try-outs if consumers find that the product is of high value to them
and thus are willing to pay a higher price. Lewis and Sappington (1994)
consider a market where buyers are uncertain about their tastes (valuations) for
the product offered in the market and the seller has to decide whether to allow
consumers to try out.
Suppose that there are two types of consumers whose valuations for a product
can be high ($1,000) or low ($500). Assume that there is an equal number of
consumers—say, 500—in each type. The expected (mean) valuation of the
product is $750, which is the maximum price (risk neutral) buyers are willing
to pay without any information about the product. Suppose that the quality of
the product is already determined (given exogenously), and the cost of the
product is $600. If the firm does not allow consumers to try out the product
and sells it at the expected market price of $750, all 1,000 consumers will buy.
Even though consumers with low valuations are paying more than the
product's worth, there is no way they can be sure of this in advance. The firm's
profit is $150,000.
If, on the other hand, the firm allows consumers to try out its product, low-type
consumers by definition will be unwilling to pay, after learning about the
product, any price over $500 whereas high-type consumers can be charged up
to $1,000. Therefore, the firm will be better off to sell its product only to
high-type consumers at $1,000 and abandon all its low-type consumers. The
market is naturally segmented by try-outs. As a result, the firm's profit is
increased to $200,000.
Clearly, the firm's incentive to provide try-outs lies in the possibility to
segment the market and charge the maximum price. Critical to this is the cost
of the product. If the cost is higher than the valuation of low-type consumers,
the firm abandons them and focuses on high-type consumers (see fig. 4.3). To
justify high price, the firm must allow try-outs. But, if the cost is below the
low-type's valuation of $500, it would be more profitable for the firm to sell it
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at the expected price of $750. To capture low-type consumers as well, the firm
should not allow try-outs. In this case, with a cost of $400, the profit would be
$350,000 without try-outs—a $350 margin for each unit sold.
In comparison, the profit is $300,000 with try outs and segmentation—a $600
margin for 500 units sold. If the firm can charge different prices, it may be
able to offer its product at $500 to low-type consumers, which yields $100 per
unit to bring in an additional $50,000. Then, high-type consumers may resent
the fact that they are charged $1,000 for the same product, and begin to
misrepresent their types. The firm needs some mechanism to distinguish
consumers based on their types; otherwise it will not serve low-type
consumers.
Figure 4.3 Try-out strategies and prices.

If the cost of production is higher than the expected price ($750 in this
example), this try-out model is very similar to the case of the lemons problem.
The firm has no choice but to offer try-outs because it cannot break even at
$750, and hope to convince high-type consumers to buy. Also, if the price is
higher than $750, no consumers are willing to buy the product without being
sure of the its valuation. With try-outs, only high-type consumers will buy the
product at the maximum valuation ($1,000). In the lemons problem of used car
markets, the cost to a high-type seller is its valuation (that is, $1,000),

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which is higher than the expected market price. Thus, try outs, if available, can
be used to resolve the quality uncertainty.
Some products are ill suited for try-outs. Suppose, for example, that Alice is
selling a computer database of weather information for all major U.S. cities,
and allows her customers to search for one city prior to purchase. Bob, who
wants to get information about the weather in San Francisco, can get the data
for San Francisco by using the try-out and then decline to buy the database.
Two mechanisms may become important in such a situation. First, Alice may
devise a demonstration plan, by which Bob can be convinced of the database's
quality without revealing any information from the database. Such a plan is
based on an algorithm known as zero-knowledge proofs. (See section 6.2 for a
detailed discussion on zero-knowledge proofs). Second, micropayment
methods may adequately address Bob's need, and in general support unbundled
sales of digital products. Although bundling of many related products will be
essential for information and digital products, microsales and microbundles are
useful in allowing consumers to try out without relying on free give-aways.
For some products, consumers may not be sure of their quality even after
try-outs. For others, try-outs may not be available for all features of a product,
or may take time and costly effort to learn. Still others are technically too
complex for consumers to evaluate their features. In these cases, an expert
evaluation may be needed.
Third-Party Information
In addition to the direct seller-buyer information channels considered so far,

intermediaries may be essential to resolving the issue of quality uncertainty.
For some products, a certain degree of technical knowledge is needed to
understand and evaluate various product specifications. Although a
well-designed web page may have FAQs and links to related sites and papers
for consumers to read about technical aspects of a product, not all consumers
are equipped to digest this information. Therefore, someone with technical
expertise is needed who can provide objective quality evaluation. And as an
objective evaluation of a product often involves a comparison with competing
products, a third party other than sellers and buyers is often preferred.
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Third-party intermediaries can be separated into two groups: public and
private. Public third parties have no profit motive and may be supported by
public funds. Private third parties, on the other hand, provide information for a
fee as their business.
Public third parties include a wide array of very different institutions and
organizations. Newspapers, magazines, and television news programs often
review and rate digital products and web sites. Personal web pages that
provide assorted links by subject are in fact reviewed and evaluated by
individuals. Similarly, many Internet sites are touted as being a "top 5 percent"
web site, and display some kind of award. Search services maintain "What's
Hot" lists that are reviewed and rated. As long as these services are offered as
a public service, they may be classified as public third-party activities.
Public third parties, however, are often limited in their service because of the
nature of public goods. Objective product information is a public good useful
to all members of a society, but the organization or firm producing the
information cannot charge those who benefit from the information. As a result,
public goods tend to be undersupplied. Because of high costs, Consumer
Reports, for example, cannot provide its valuable service for all products on
the market. Third parties such as government agencies, industry organizations,
and consumer advocacy groups also try to establish certain quality standards
that can be applied to all products in the market. Standards set up by
government or industry groups, for example, often dictate the minimum level
of quality and technical capabilities such as UL sets for electric appliances and
government safety standards set for automobiles. These minimum standards
are often minimally useful in determining what to buy, however, because all
reasonable products on the market have supposedly exceeded the minimum.
As such, their usefulness is limited.
Retailers and Other Brokers
Alternatively, market organizations such as retailers and brokers who have

incentives to maximize profits may offer product evaluation. A profit-
motivated intermediary is a private third party who sells information as a
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product. As it is a long-run player, the intermediary has an incentive to review
products and be truthful to consumers to maintain its reputation. Whether its
information is in fact efficient and truthful will depend on the way the market
rewards the intermediary's activities.
If public organizations cannot provide adequate public information, how could
one expect private, profit-oriented third parties to provide objective
information for the benefit of consumers? And how does one determine that
their information is true? Economically, one must also be concerned with the
level of information provided—that is, whether it is efficient, too much, or too
little. These questions can be answered by analyzing market incentives that
determine the level of services these intermediaries offer. This section first
defines what these intermediaries are and then presents a detailed analysis in
the next section.
For this discussion, private third parties are defined as intermediaries such as
retailers who are not producers but who may convey quality information to
consumers as a part of their business activities. They offer both direct and
indirect quality information. Direct information is conveyed when they
guarantee the quality of the product they distribute. Measures to support
product guarantee such as unlimited return policy, however, may be difficult to
implement in electronic commerce. First and foremost, digital products, for
example, can be copied so easily that physically "returning" a product has little
meaning. Second, refunds may not be feasible for items purchased with
micropayments whose transaction costs may be larger than the value of those
products.
Indirect information is transmitted to consumers through the identity and
reputation of the third parties themselves. Building reputation is profitable
when consumers repeat purchases and as long as high-quality goods command
higher prices (Shapiro, 1982). When consumers are not expected to repeat
purchases, however, reputable firms have little advantage over fly-by-night
operators. A disadvantage of sellers in the electronic marketplace is that
indirect quality signals available in conventional markets have little or no
meaning. Buyers can often judge the quality of a product, for example, from
the appearance of a store or the identity of a seller. A posh department store
offers better

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quality, albeit pricey, products than a discount store. In a virtual market where
physical presence has little relevance, however, these indirect information
signals are not available or undergo radical changes. Clearly, the role of
intermediaries and their effectiveness in conveying just such quality
information in electronic commerce is a complex topic that this discussion has
only begun to explore.
4.3. Quality and Intermediaries

The need for an intermediary is often dismissed in the direct seller-to-buyer
transaction model often envisioned for Internet commerce. A market-driven
solution to the lemons problem, however, involves relying on an intermediary
who has an incentive to provide truthful information about quality in the
manner buyers can trust. When there are multiple buyers and sellers as in
international cyberspace, there is even less chance of a buyer finding a seller
with a recognizable name. Especially for a one-time purchase of a small
document, searching and learning about all potential sellers would be far too
costly. In a market where neither sellers nor public third parties are adequate in
resolving quality uncertainty, an intermediary-based market clearing
mechanism can achieve an efficiency similar to, or better than, any
non-mediated or regulatory regime, by transmitting product information and
successfully and efficiently mediating a trade.
This discussion's definition of intermediaries includes various types of market
agents and institutions, besides sellers and buyers, who participate in market
transactions but do not consume the product for themselves. In a typical
commercial transaction, for example, a wide range of intermediaries is
involved—advertising agencies, insurance companies, banks, wholesalers and
retailers, delivery firms, and regulatory agencies. Each of these intermediaries
adds value to the product as well as costs. The primary economic role of an
intermediary is in reducing the total cost of production and delivery through
transactional efficiencies, reviewed in the following section. This role,
however,
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is of minor interest because a market will function, albeit less efficiently,
without such efficiency-enhancing intermediaries. On the other hand,
intermediaries perform an essential role without which a market may fail.
Brokering quality information is one such instance, and for that reason,
intermediaries will be as important in electronic commerce as in physical
markets.
Transactional Efficiencies
Traditionally, the economic gain attributed to an intermediary—reduced

costs—is largely due to organizational efficiency. Essentially, a firm can
undertake the same task performed by an outside intermediary, but an
intermediary is preferred because it costs less. A manufacturer, for example,
could accept product orders directly from consumers and deliver them. But the
firm often finds it cheaper to sell its product to a wholesaler. The cost-reducing
role of intermediaries has been the subject of transactions economics of Coase
(1937) and Williamson (1975). Transactions economics distinguishes
production costs from other costs incurred to fulfill market transactions such as
delivery, insurance, and other contractual arrangements. The efficiency of
intermediaries depends on whether the total transaction or coordination cost
from using an intermediary is more or less than not using it.
For a firm or a market to be efficient, production costs as well as transaction
costs must be minimized. For that reason, a market with lower transaction
costs is considered to be more efficient. Some see middlemen as just adding to
the cost of distribution. The cost of selling to consumers in physical
markets—for example, inventorying, billing, and shipping expenses—can
sometimes be lowered by using intermediaries. In many cases, wholesalers and
retailers provide producers with a more efficient distribution channel. Lacking
these intermediaries, many firms would have to duplicate their distribution for
each customer. In figure 4.4, a producer selling directly to multiple buyers
incurs costs of T1 for each transaction.
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Figure 4.4 Transaction costs comparison with and without an intermediary.

In physical markets, a firm sells in bulk to an intermediary (costing T2) who is
located close to consumers or has an efficient distribution system. The
intermediary adds T3 as its selling cost to the final price. As a result, in an
intermediated market, the total transaction cost per consumer is T2 plus T3.
This may be lower than T1 because (a) the intermediary is closer to buyers,
minimizing T3 and (b) the producer incurs only one T2 to deliver his product
in bulk so that the per consumer cost is lower due to the economy of scale.
On the Internet, however, the firm will sell only one copy to the intermediary,
who makes digital copies and sells them to buyers. Therefore, wholesaling in
bulk has little meaning in digital commerce—except perhaps in "mirroring"
where duplicated materials are kept in several servers—and with consumers
distributed widely throughout the network, the intermediary's cost of selling to
consumers (T3) might be as large as the cost of producer-to-buyer delivery
(T1). In other words, the gain from retailing and distribution is not so apparent
in the non-spatial environment of the Internet.
This scenario seems to indicate that there is no role for an intermediary,
especially one of distribution, on the Internet. An efficient search method
reduces the need to rely on someone "who knows all producers" in the market.
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Therefore, the rationale for an intermediary in electronic commerce has little to
do with transactional efficiencies. What then is the role of an intermediary in
electronic commerce? An intermediary improves market efficiency by
providing third-party information about product quality, thereby eliminating
the possibility of a market failure due to quality uncertainty. The more severe
the uncertainty about the quality is, the stronger the need for an efficient
intermediary in electronic commerce.
In resolving the lemons problem, intermediaries may actually increase the
transaction costs. The intermediary, for example, may need to invest in
becoming an expert who can tell the quality of a product requiring technical
knowledge. For experience goods, the intermediary may try out all the
products it sells and gain knowledge. Both the expertise and experience have
costs attached. Despite increased transaction costs, however, the intermediated
market gains efficiency over the lemons market because the market is not
foreclosed—that is, goods are available to consumers. Even an intermediary
who has no expertise in evaluating quality may provide quality assurance
simply by virtue of being a long-term player in the market. Again, the
intermediary may add to the costs of transaction, but it does not need to invest
in expertise or undergo costly testing while acting as an information source to
prevent market failure. The following section discusses the informational roles
of an intermediary.
Intermediaries as Experts
As mentioned previously, consumers are unable to discover the quality of a

product if the quality evaluation is complicated and requires special expertise
or if the product is an experience good. A gem stone or an art painting, for
example, requires an expert evaluator to judge its value. Sophisticated word
processing programs are often evaluated by software experts, but still leave
consumers scratching their heads. For an experience good such as information,
its quality can be learned only after viewing (using) the product.
Neither acquiring an expertise nor using a product is costless. An art evaluator
undergoes years of training and experience to become an expert. Because an
intermediary, by definition, does not derive any utility from

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consuming a product, he is wasting time and effort to learn the quality from
usage. What then are the incentives for an intermediary to invest in acquiring
evaluation skills or learning the quality of a product and to be truthful about
the information? First, an intermediary makes repeated purchases of similar
items, unlike consumers who may purchase a given item once or twice.
Therefore, the intermediary has an incentive to acquire knowledge, a sunk
cost, to be used for numerous purchases. Second, the intermediary is a
long-term player and his payoff from being truthful comes from continued
sales which will cease if his credibility is questioned.
Intermediaries as experts operate more frequently in certain types of markets
(Biglaiser, 1993). They are common where the difference between low-quality
and high-quality products is large, giving a larger profit margin from the two
expected prices. Also, if there are more low-quality goods than high-quality
goods, the cost to search for a high-quality good may justify the use of an
expert intermediary. In contrast, experts add little value if products are in
general of a high quality. A used-car market is a case in point, where products
are of high value but buyers are weary about lemons. Thus a successful
intermediary must assure buyers of product quality.
Aucnet USA, Inc. (http://www.aucnet.com), a new player in the wholesale
used-car market, combines the role of quality guarantor with digital
technologies that organize and facilitate market transactions. The idea of
Aucnet originated from a Japanese used-car dealer who saw an opportunity in
dealer-to-dealer trading. Used-car buyers are physically limited to visit all
dealers, and as a result some dealers may have excess inventory while others
may be unable to meet demand. A dealer-to-dealer exchange network,
however, is also constrained by the difficulty in moving cars. Aucnet, instead,
organizes a market for information on used cars trading in a satellite auction
market.
Three elements distinguish Aucnet from conventional electronic malls. First,
Aucnet provides detailed information on each used car put on the auction.
Inspected and graded by its own trained professionals, Aucnet guarantees its
quality evaluation, thereby inducing dealers to participate in remote auctions.
Second, Aucnet uses auction as a price discovering mechanism instead of
using posted prices. Thus, Aucnet is an electronic market that mediates excess
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supply and demand of its members. Finally, Aucnet also provides bulletin
boards where its members trade cars before and after an auction. This
secondary trading opportunity enables the market to be more active and offers
a self-corrective mechanism just as options markets enable stock investors and
commodity traders a chance to hedge. Aucnet members' participation in the
auction depends critically on their knowledge that Aucnet guarantees the
quality of each car—or the truthfulness of their information.
An Aucnet-like electronic market can be organized for any product whose
supply and demand are often unmatched. Most printing shops, for example,
lease expensive color copiers for which they have to make monthly payments.
Depending on the rental price and the demand, the price for color copying may
vary widely from week to week. A web-based intermediary market can be
organized to connect all printing shops, showing jobs waiting to be finished
and the status of all copiers. The service may be limited to printers or open to
consumers who can comparison shop. Such an intermediary market will
counter excess demand or supply problems, foster better uses of resources, and
simplify the consumer search process. In a similar vein, FlyCast
Communications Corp. (http://www.flycast.com) proposes to connect web
advertisers (buyers) with web store owners (sellers) to leverage web space
renting and advertising in a real-time dynamic exchange market. Some web
sites have idle space, while there are advertisers who are willing to pay
premium prices for the right mix of location, contents, and traffic. Its
client/server application, AdAgent, works like a real-time stock exchange
market, sending bids by advertisers and auctioning off ad spaces as well as
dispatching and displaying ads in real time. Finally, as part of the effort to
deregulate utility industries, electricity trading markets are being organized on
the Internet, where excess power capacity is sold and bought among electricity
wholesalers. To transmit electricity from a remote excess power supplier to
those in need requires a complex negotiation among many transmission
providers. Web-based information systems have been proposed to support such
an effort through the Open Access Same-time Information Systems (OASIS)
or TSIN (http://www.tsin.com). (See Chapter 11, "Business and Policy
Implications of Electronic Commerce," for a detailed discussion on the utility
deregulation and electronic commerce.)
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Intermediaries as an Information Source
Although, in the preceding discussion, the intermediary develops a superior

skill and knowledge to assess product quality, he may find it too costly to
invest time and effort for small-value products. Suppose that an intermediary
sells thousands of small pieces of information—literary essays and opinions on
behalf of numerous individual web entrepreneurs. For such microproducts,
intermediaries may have no incentive to guarantee the quality of the product.
Nevertheless, the economic problem of the lemons must be dealt with for the
web business to flourish. Is there an economic mechanism by which an
intermediary who is not a better quality evaluator than consumers may still
serve as a quality guarantor?
Such a mechanism exists when an intermediary is simply a long-term player in
the market. Without heavy investment for training and experience to develop
expertise, this type of intermediary provides web entrepreneurs with a sales
outlet but maintains a punishment mechanism if the quality of their product
declines. Because the intermediary is no better than the consumer in knowing
the quality, a simple method of tracking the quality is to rely on customers'
complaints. When customers complain about a product, the intermediary drops
the producer from its list of sellers after reviewing the case. In this case, the
role of an intermediary is similar to a bulletin-board system where consumers
exchange information and blacklist cheating producers.
A critical reason why such an intermediary may resolve the lemons problem
by offering quality information is that the intermediary sells products from
multiple producers. Single-product intermediaries may collude with a
producer, on the basis of sharing profits, to continues to sell the good despite
complaints from customers. A multiproduct intermediary, however, will suffer
if it colludes with one cheating producer and continues to sell a bad product,
because consumers will stop buying other products from the intermediary as
well. This "reputational spillover," as it is called (Biglaiser and Friedman,
1994), gives intermediaries an incentive to punish a cheating supplier by
dropping its product, encouraging producers to maintain high quality. This
type of simple punishment strategy works very well in a dynamic market such

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as the Internet because it only requires a short-term, unsophisticated
contracting between the supplier and the buyer (intermediary). The section
entitled "Intermediaries and Contracts" investigates the economics of
short-term contracts.
Intermediaries as Producers
This section concludes by pointing out an important function of an

intermediary besides that of a broker and a quality guarantor. Intermediaries in
physical markets often combine or assemble several products into a new
product. This activity of a retailer is in fact a production through packaging
and processing existing goods to match consumer needs not met by individual
producers. Consequently, intermediaries are more than a simple distributor;
they are an integral part of the whole value chain from production to sales.
In electronic commerce, packaging and processing products by an
intermediary will become more important because digital products are highly
customizable and because producers of digital products are smaller and more
numerous than in physical markets, each catering to a very specialized taste.
Newspaper publishers and news organizations such as CNN, for example, are
in fact intermediaries who collect, process, and distribute products authored by
writers, reporters, and columnists. Consumers value articles that appear in the
New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com) or a report on CNN because these
intermediaries have reputations for high quality, whereas the quality of
individual writers and reporters is hard to ascertain. Both of these companies
may sell their products as a pure intermediary by just distributing articles and
reports on their web pages. Instead, they act as an intermediate producer by
bundling component stories into an information service. Intermediaries of this
sort are pervasive in electronic commerce.
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4.4. Intermediaries and Contracts
The remaining two sections present two types of markets where the problem of
quality uncertainty is solved. The first market type does it through an
intermediary who, without verifying quality of each product it sells, succeeds
in guaranteeing quality. The second type of market is an electronic resale
market such as forsale newsgroups. In both cases, what produces the desired
result is an effective punishment mechanism that encourages producers or
suppliers to maintain high quality. Although both types are prevalent in
electronic commerce, profit-motivated intermediaries may dominate the future
marketplace because public forums such as newsgroups may not get necessary
funds to support their market activities or lack an adequate means to control
and sustain effective exchanges.
The mechanisms described in this and the next sections intend to show that
undesirable effects of quality uncertainty can be avoided through some market
arrangements. Certainly, they are not needed if consumers are well informed,
and if so, the electronic marketplace offers opportunities for sellers to innovate
their production, marketing, and customer-service processes. Dell Computer
Corporation (http://www.dell.com) of Austin, Texas, for example, heavily
relies on direct sales to its customers through its online web store, where
customers can build a computer to their specification online, be informed
about real-time order status, and contact service representatives (see fig. 4.5).
Dell's direct marketing strategy eliminates dealer markup, costly distribution
network, and physical stores. More importantly, it enables the company to be
in direct contact with its customers, which not only helps to improve customer
service but also enables more effective product development and marketing
processes. (Chapter 8 addresses product customization and customer retention
issues.)
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Figure 4.5 Dell's web store.

Despite these advantages of direct marketing, consumers are wary of
producers of unknown quality goods. The previous section briefly describes
how an intermediary punishes cheating suppliers by refusing to accept their
products in the future. But, is such a strategy sufficient to induce those
suppliers to provide goods of high quality? Will it be better to institute a
random but consistent procedure to verify quality, or to spell out the quality
requirement in a procurement contract in the first place? Surprisingly, recent
studies argue that neither a costly quality verification nor a complete contract
is necessary to secure high quality. The first example comes from a study of
subcontracting systems by Taylor and Wiggins (forthcoming in AER). The
second example is a theoretical study by Bernheim and Whinston (forthcoming
in AER) regarding incomplete contracts. In both cases, the buyers are
interpreted to be the intermediary in electronic commerce.
Subcontracting Systems
Two types of subcontracting systems are in use to address the quality problem:
competitive bidding and just-in-time purchasing. In the U.S. and most Western
countries, a buyer offers a procurement contract to a large pool of potential
Page 165
subcontractors, who submit a bid to win the contract. Through this competitive
bidding system, the buyer selects a subcontractor with the lowest bid. After the
contract is awarded, it lasts until the quantity specified is fulfilled. Quality is
checked on each delivery, and products with unsatisfactory quality are
returned, but shipments continue until the contract expires. In comparison,
just-in-time purchasing has been used in Japan, where a buyer deals with a
relatively small number of subcontractors, and procurement contracts tend to
be awarded based on past performance rather than through competitive
bidding. Under the just-in-time procurement system, deliveries, which are of
relatively small quantity, are seldom inspected by the buyer. The supply
contract may require only a small quantity, but the length of the contract is left
open-ended, lasting as long as the buyer is satisfied with the subcontractor's
performance.
Neither of these two procurement systems has inherent advantages over the
other, but the desirability depends on the way production is set up (Taylor and
Wiggins). The competitive bidding system is well suited for mass-production
facilities with intermittent production runs. Such a production facility has high
set-up costs, but the unit production cost is lower due to the large scale of
production. Similarly, supplies are delivered a few times in large quantity,
minimizing costs for delivery as well as for quality inspection. The
just-in-time delivery system, on the other hand, accommodates a more flexible
production process that is run for smaller quantities. Computer-aided
production systems, for example, enable producers to vary product
specifications, and as a result product differentiation and customization
become more important than lowering unit costs based on mass production.
Correspondingly, the set-up cost or fixed cost for each production run is
relatively small. Flexible production in turn requires frequent, just-in-time
supplies with minimal delivery and inspection costs. In other words, the choice
of a procurement system depends on how a production process is set up
regarding its fixed cost.
An intermediary in electronic commerce offers an array of digital products,
often assembled using parts supplied by numerous producers—for example,
online newspaper publishers or CNN. For a digital product, its supply involves
only one copy, and customization is more critical than minimizing the unit

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production cost. In this regard, the just-in-time purchasing system is more relevant than the
competitive bidding system to digital-product intermediaries. This implies that intermediaries,
rather than attempting to verify quality of each delivered product, will use their continued
supply relationship as a means to induce suppliers to provide quality products.
The just-in-time purchasing system needs to establish a long-term relationship with suppliers
because, otherwise, the threat to discontinue will have little effect on the supplier's
performance. This very fact, however, limits the number of suppliers in physical markets,
often foregoing the gains from a competitive supply market such as a lower price.
Nevertheless, competition among suppliers may have little value in electronic commerce
because digital products, unlike automobile parts, may not be standardized in any meaningful
way. Furthermore, digital intermediaries need not limit the number of products they sell, and
may establish a long-term relationship with all prospective suppliers as long as their products
are selling.
Intermediaries in electronic commerce, then, purchase products using the just-in-time system,
and offer quality products without incurring costs to learn or inspect the quality. If consumers
buy directly from producers, the lack of a long-term relationship increases the chance of
getting a lemon. Although consumers may refuse to pay, return the lemon, or demand a
refund, such a punishment strategy based on current sale may fail to discourage cheating by
fly-by-night operators, especially if payments are made prior to sale and there is no adequate
means to recover them. This scenario seems to indicate that intermediaries do indeed play an
important role in electronic commerce.
The key incentive for suppliers in the just-in-time procurement system is the continued profit
in the future if they maintain high quality. The same sort of incentive mechanism can be
implemented through short-term, incomplete contracts between suppliers and intermediaries.
Incomplete Contracts
An incomplete contract leaves certain specifications out of the contract such as the
performance standard or a specific obligation, but may end up inducing
Page 167
the best outcome (Bernheim and Whinston, 1997). Suppose, for example, that Alice writes a
contract with Bob, her son in high school, to encourage and reward his school work. Alice,
being a working single mom, cannot verify how much studying Bob does each day or, more
importantly, how much Bob is learning in a meaningful way. Such an intellectual activity is
not verifiable—that is, in terms of business, an activity that is difficult to prove in court to be
one way or the other—but his school grades, although they are an imperfect indicator for
learning, are observable. Should Alice specify what grades Bob should be getting in the
contract, or should she avoid specifying target grades and leave them to Bob's discretion? If
the contract spells out what grades Bob should be getting—for example, all Bs—and
corresponding payments, the best Alice can expect is all Bs. Even if she demands all As, that
does not mean that Bob is actually learning; Bob may be cheating or just getting high grades
without learning anything.
If Alice is concerned with Bob's education, she may opt to write an incomplete contract by
leaving out any mention of grades or by only specifying minimum grades, but adding some
discretionary payments based on her future evaluation that Bob is actually doing his best.
Such an incomplete contract is common in wage negotiations: Bonus payments leave firms
the ability to respond to favorable work performance by their workers. In Bob's case, under a
complete contract, he has an incentive to minimize his effort to learn whether he can meet the
required grades. With an incomplete contract, Bob is rewarded for all his effort, and thus
doing his best is for his own advantage. The key aspect here is that Bob's and Alice's
incentives work toward the same goal.
In the earlier just-in-time procurement system, the punishment—the termination of contract
forever—induces the suppliers to maintain high quality. Therefore, the term of contract is left
unspecified—that is, an incomplete contract. In other words, continued future contracts are
the reward for high quality, although the term of contract was not specified, just as Bob's
rewards are not specified by Alice. When performance is not verifiable but otherwise can be
rewarded in some way—that is, if the desires or incentives of the contracting parties can be
made complementary—an incomplete contract results in a better outcome than a complete
contract.
Page 168
Such an incomplete contract is often observed between suppliers and intermediaries, where
high-quality products induce continued trading and benefit both the intermediary and its
suppliers. An example of an incomplete contract is an option contract, by which an
intermediary does not inspect the quality for each shipment, but has an option to terminate it
at any time. Any fly-by-night operators will be excluded from the intermediary market.
Numerous online shopping malls are springing up on the Internet. See, for example, Yahoo!'s
list at
http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Shopping_Centers/Online_Malls,
the Internet Mall (http://www.internet-mall.com), or Downtown Anywhere
(http://www.awa.com). But these online marketplaces just offer hypertexted links to
participating merchants' web sites or house them within their online web mall. A true online
intermediary, on the other hand, must offer an integrated online shopping network,
implementing a contract with its suppliers, which addresses the complaints about quality by
its customers.
Such an option contract can be implemented between the intermediary and its customers as
well. A complete contract, for example, is a subscription plan for an online information
service, for which the seller guarantees the quality of its service and the buyer agrees to pay
subscription fees for the duration of the contract. A subscriber cannot always verify the
quality throughout the contract period, however, giving the service provider an incentive to
shirk after the contract is signed. Customers, then, may not renew their subscription at the end
of the contract, but the seller's horizon may be short enough to disregard this loss.
Furthermore, unlike the competitive bidding system previously discussed, subscribers may
have no satisfactory means to "return" unsatisfactory services and demand refunds or
withhold payments. An incomplete contract, on the other hand, is based on microproducts and
micropayments, where short-term contracts are renewed each time consumers order
something. Instead of purchasing a bundled product, consumers are allowed to exercise an
option to pick and choose, continuing their patronage if products turn out to be of high
quality.

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4.5. Summary
Although it is well understood that the Internet presents an exciting
opportunity to reduce transaction costs, its future may depend on how non-
technological but fundamentally economic issues such as the lemons problem
are solved. A market where buyers and sellers trade goods electronically lacks
many of the conventional ways to assess the quality of a product. This chapter
reviewed the basic economic reason why a market fails to exist when the
quality information is not available. Sellers may provide information about
their products but, for some products, it is difficult for consumers to assess the
quality even with detailed information. Furthermore, buyers may not trust
seller-provided information. An alternative is to rely on a trusted third party
who has the expertise to evaluate quality, but employing such experts may be
costly. For low-value items, then, the uncertainty about quality may be the
main reason why a market does not exist—witness the amount of information
being stored on millions of personal web pages and the common notion that
these pages are lemons. If electronic commerce were to ferment a truly
informational age, any little bit of information should find a market to trade in,
although a pecuniary remuneration would not be the only incentive for
engaging and disseminating information and knowledge.
Intermediaries in electronic commerce may play an important role in
enhancing market efficiency by providing product information even when
intermediaries do not have superior knowledge and skills to evaluate quality.
They act as a source of quality information by being a long-term player in the
market and by carrying a range of products. Similarly, consumers are better off
by having an option to buy microproducts with micropayments as well as
bundling and subscription, which forces sellers to maintain high quality.
Page 170
References
Akerlof, G., 1970. "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the
Market Mechanism." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84: 488_500.
Bernheim, B.D., and M.D. Whinston, forthcoming. "Incomplete Contracts and
Strategic Ambiguity." Forthcoming in American Economic Review.
Biglaiser, G., 1993. "Middlemen as Experts." RAND Journal of Economics,
24(2): 212_223.
Biglaiser, G., and J.W. Friedman, 1994. "Middlemen as Guarantors of
Quality." International Journal of Industrial Organization, 12: 509_531.
Coase, R., 1937. "The Nature of the Firm." Economica, 4: 386_405.
Cooper, R., and T. Ross, 1984. "Prices, Product Qualities, and Asymmetric
Information: The Competitive Case." The Review of Economic Studies, 51:
197_207.
Lewis, T.R., and D.E.M. Sappington, 1994. "Supplying Information to
Facilitate Price Discrimination." International Economic Review, 35(2):
309_326.
Oi, W., 1992. "Productivity in the Distributive Trades: The Shopper and the
Economies of Massed Reserves." In Output Measurement in the Service
Sectors, Zvi Griliches, ed., pp. 161_191. Chicago, IL.: The University of
Chicago Press.
Rubinstein, A., and A. Wolinsky, 1987. "Middlemen." Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 102: 581_593.
Salop, S., and J. Stiglitz, 1977. "Bargains and Ripoffs: A Model of
Monopolistically Competitive Price Dispersion." The Review of Economic
Studies, 44: 494_510.
Page 171
Shapiro, C., 1982. "Consumer Information, Product Quality, and Seller
Reputation." The Bell Journal of Economics, 13: 20_35.
Taylor, C.R., and S.N. Wiggins, forthcoming. "Competition or Compensation:
Supplier Incentives Under the American and Japanese Subcontracting
Systems." Forthcoming in American Economic Review.
Williamson, O.E., 1975. Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust
Implications. New York: Free Press.
Williamson, S.D., 1987. "Recent Developments in Modeling Financial
Intermediation." Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Quarterly Review,
Summer, pp. 19_29.

Economics of the Lemons Problem
Akerlof (1970) is a classic study of the lemons problem. His model is one of
pure exchange between consumers, and thus the seller's cost is the same as his
valuation of the product. This implies that, in terms of Lewis and Sappington
as discussed in the section entitled "Information Channels in Electronic
Commerce," the cost for high-type producers is $1,000, in which case there
can be no trade unless buyers are assured of quality.
Cooper and Ross (1984) is a model with informed and uninformed consumers.
It analyzes the degree to which prices convey product information. In
particular, they consider the shape of average cost curves: U-shaped versus
constant average costs with respect to quantity.
Page 172
Chan, Y. S., and H.E. Leland, 1982. "Prices and Qualities in Markets with
Costly Information." The Review of Economic Studies, 49: 499_516. This
extends the works of Akerlof, Salop, and Stiglitz (1977) in two directions: The
sellers can select both the selling prices and quality levels, and the buyers can
acquire price/quality information about individual sellers at a cost.
Salop and Stiglitz (1977) is a model of a market where a portion of consumers
are informed, and others are not informed. This type of model is known as a
"tourists versus natives" model.
Repeat Purchases and Reputation
For infinite horizon models, see the following:

● Klein, B., and K. Leffler, 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring
Contractual Performance." Journal of Political Economy, 81: 615_641.
● Shapiro (1982) studies one mechanism that prevents deterioration of the
quality: firm-specific reputation. See also Shapiro, C., 1983. "Premiums
for High-Quality Products as Rents to Reputation." Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 98: 659_680.
For limited horizon models, see the following:
● Kreps, D., and R. Wilson, 1982. "Reputation and Imperfect
Information." Journal of Economic Theory, 27: 253_279.
● Milgrom, P., and J. Roberts, 1982. "Redation, Reputation, and Entry
Deterrence." Journal of Economic Theory, 27: 280_312.
Page 173
Internet Resources
Internet Commerce
Figure 4.6 CommerceNet logo.
CommerceNet (http://www.commerce.net) is a non-profit consortium launched
in 1994 to act as an industry association for Internet commerce. It acts as the
advocacy group for the use of the Internet as a commercial medium,
coordinates the development of key Internet technologies, and supports their
applications through pilot projects and other informational activities.
Internet and Economics
Figure 4.7 WebEC logo.

WebEc (http://www.helsinki.fi/webec/) is an exhaustive list of web resources
on economics. Its mirror sites (which contain a copy) include
http://netec.wustl.edu/webec.html (USA), http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/webec.html
(UK), and http://netec.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/webec.html (Japan).

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The List of Economics Journals (http://www.helsinki.fi/webec/journals.html)
contains links to almost all economic journals published today. Some of these
links have tables of contents and abstracts, and provide search facilities.
JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org) have archived articles published in American
Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of
Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, and Journal of Money, Credit
and Banking.

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CHAPTER 5
Economic Aspects of Copyright

Protection
Intellectual property laws are typically linked to a discussion of the values of
intellectual creativity and society's use of information and ideas. Nevertheless,
they are fundamentally economic measures and their implementation and
enforcement can and indeed should be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness
in achieving desired market changes. This chapter attempts to do just that. The
ultimate end of intellectual property laws is to promote the creation of
knowledge and useful arts. This goal, however, cannot be achieved without
incentives, which most often are economic. This chapter examines the issue of
digital copyright by focusing on the law's intention to protect the market for
copyright owners. Therefore, any measure to enhance digital copyright has to
be evaluated in terms of how well it accomplishes this. Nevertheless, far more
than the use of legal and artificial market barriers, this chapter advocates the
essential role of strategy in resolving the copyright debate.
The most efficient allocation of resources is obtained when markets are
competitive—in other words, when prices are determined by demand and
supply and fully reflect the cost of producing a good, its opportunity costs, and
society's valuation for the good as well as other uses of the same resources. To
achieve maximum efficiency, the market forces must not be inhibited by
external measures such as taxes, artificial barriers to entry, and other measures
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that affect the level of market power of either sellers or buyers. Copyrights and
patents seem to directly contradict this by giving authors and inventors a
limited monopoly right over production and distribution of a good. Why then
is there the need to give artificial monopoly rights to authors?
The need to protect intellectual properties to the extent that competitive market
mechanisms are abandoned has less to do with the fact that society values
creativity so highly but because ideas, once discovered and put into words and
other physical forms, can be easily copied, often without incurring additional
effort and time. To those who believe that human creativity belongs to
humanity or society, this is an added advantage that makes disseminating ideas
easier. In an age of information, however, producing ideas has become the
most important economic activity, and ideas consume enormous resources and
time to produce. In other words, ideas and intellectual properties have become
investments that must be remunerated.
Disseminating ideas is desirable and necessary for the prosperity of a society.
Teaching a new and improved farming technology to neighbors, for example,
increases overall agricultural production without restricting the inventor of the
new method from reaping benefits on his or her own land by using the same
technology. Although ownership of physical properties such as land must be
clearly defined to prevent inefficient use, intellectual properties are often more
valuable if shared. After ideas are written down in physical forms that are then
traded, however, the ownership right of an idea and its physical manifestations
in various forms becomes an economic issue, first set forth formally in the
copyright legislation of the 16th century.
5.1. Economic History of Copyright

Copyright is a by-product of the mass printing process, improved literacy, and
market incentives for profits. Its statutory specifics have historically evolved in
Page 177
the context of the book trade, emphasizing the "property" aspects over the
more "intellectual" perspective. In today's age of information and digital
products, many fear that copyright laws formulated to regulate the book trade
are grossly inadequate, pointing out that digital media are fundamentally
different from the paper medium in both production and distribution. As the
printing press forced society to re-think intellectual properties four centuries
ago, the digital communication again compels a reevaluation of the purpose
and practice of copyright laws.
In an effort to continue to protect authors' rights in the digital era, new
technologies and tools are being developed specifically to control digital
communication. The development of a comprehensive implementation scheme
for digital copyright, however, must grow out of the overall purpose of such
measures, and will be judged by its effectiveness in fulfilling any agreed-upon
function of copyright law. To better understand the rationale for copyright
protection, this discussion reviews how two strands of thought regarding
intellectual properties—property rights versus authorship rights—have
developed along with the modern publishing industry.
The property rights approach sees the objective of a copyright law as
guaranteeing market and revenues for authors and thereby promoting a
continuous supply of high-quality products. Followers of this approach regard
current copyright laws to be adequate, and focus on developing new
technological means of auditing, identifying, and measuring digital flows
accompanied by vigorous enforcement of the laws.
On the other hand, the authorship rights approach considers the fundamental
function of copyright to be protecting authors' moral rights to their creation, so
a stricter mechanism is needed to control all aspects of viewing, storing,
retrieving, altering, reproducing, and transmitting their creations. Whether
these products are marketable is immaterial. Followers of this approach
believe in redefining copyright for digital products and modifying or
strengthening copyright statutes.
Page 178
The Property Aspect of Copyright
An idea, knowledge, or intellectual activity as an economic property is a

relatively modern invention. It is quite clear that laws governing property give
an owner the exclusive right to possess, use, and transfer property and other
objects connected to or derived from that property. But although physical
properties such as an acre of land or a house can be clearly defined, what is an
intellectual property? To establish property rights, one needs to first identify a)
the owner and b) the property. The owner of an intellectual property is the
author. But because of its intangible nature, ownership cannot be established
over an idea, and thus property rights are awarded to the physical expression of
the author's idea such as a book.
Despite being called "property," intellectual properties are obviously quite
different from tangible properties, and therefore legal protection and
prosecution based on copyright law are substantially different from other
property laws. This difference was highlighted in the computer hacker case of
U.S. v. Riggs in 1990 (Godwin, 1994). The prosecution tried to apply the
ITSP—Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property (18 U.S.C. 2314)—statute
to a computer hacker who made an unauthorized connection to a regional
telephone operating system, copied its emergency 911 procedure, and
distributed it, ultimately publishing it in a magazine. Instead of applying
copyright or trade secret laws, the prosecution used ITSP statutes, mistakenly
believing that property theft law also applied to intellectual properties.
Admittedly, ITSP was wrongly applied; a law governing trade secrets—against
which federal and state criminal laws have been enacted or modified to address
online cases—or wire-frauds might have been better suited.
The Supreme Court had previously stated that copyrighted material does not
meet the scope of ITSP, however, which applies to tangible items. In the case
of copying a computer file, there is no physical seizure of an item or transport
of that good. Simply put, the emergency 911 file was left on the host's
computer, and only a copy was transmitted. In this way, unauthorized copying
is substantially different from a theft protected by ordinary property statutes.

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Even generic theft statutes are found to be irrelevant in the case of
unauthorized copying. Again, theft involves physically taking an object, the
remedy to which may be recovering that object. Copyright, on the other hand,
does not protect the property itself, but rather the interest of the authors,
especially the market or profit interests. If a book is stolen from a publisher's
warehouse, for example, property laws governing theft or stolen property may
apply, but pirated copies are not theft protected by generic theft statute.
Instead, the violation is termed "infringement" of the publisher's interest
protected by copyright. This difference is illustrated by the fact that although
stolen property is recovered, pirated copies are destroyed. It is important to
recognize that, economically speaking, intellectual properties are not
properties—as tangible commodities—despite the misleading term, and
intellectual property laws do not protect the said property, but the interests of
the owners derived from the use of that property—although this interest may
very well be termed as "property" in the legal sense.
When does the proprietary right to an intellectual activity and its pecuniary
rewards become an issue? Stealing property, such as a theft, is an economic
concern because the owner is deprived of its use by which someone else
benefits. Suppose that Alice has a plow, and Bob steals that plow to plow his
land. During Bob's plowing, Alice is deprived of the use of that plow, and
perhaps loses her crop by missing the planting season. Bob's gain is Alice's
loss. Suppose, however, that Alice invented a plow attachment that makes
plowing much easier. Bob, after seeing how the attachment was made and
attached, makes his own device and gains the same benefit from reduced labor.
Alice in this case is not deprived of using her own idea on her own land.
Further suppose that Bob opens a business selling plow attachments. Does Bob
owe some monetary remuneration to Alice? Today, the answer is a resounding
yes—assuming that this plow has the same impact as it did then—but the idea
of "selling ideas" did not exist until the Modern era. Protection of private
property rights over intellectual activities is not an issue if there is no
opportunity, now or ever, of making a profit or if there is a reasonable method
of controlling reproduction and selling. During the Middle Ages, Bob or no
Page 180
one else would have thought of selling plow attachments as a business, and
innovations of many types were copied and stolen by others without regard to
intellectual property rights. (Keeping them secret was one way of controlling
ideas, to deprive others of their benefits.) Some ideas, even when not kept
secret, could not be copied. Even after printing presses revolutionized the book
trade and brought copyright issues to the forefront, for example, the same issue
was mostly irrelevant to painters and paintings, which could not be reproduced
easily.
The first known copyright theft occurred when Hermodorus copied Plato's
speeches and sold them overseas (Gurnsey, 1995). Was this a crime? If there
was a law prohibiting speech transcription and selling, Hermodorus might
have been a criminal. But the fact that there was no such law indicates that
Plato and his compatriots did not recognize a potential for profit in selling the
speeches. What limited the market for speeches was the lack of suitable
technology for producing copies. Even during the Middle Ages,
"unauthorized" hand-copying was an important part of monastic life. The
primary utility of these literary works was to communicate ideas to readers.
Disseminating ideas through hard-working monks was more important than
any profit consideration of the authors.
When Gutenberg's printing press changed the publishing industry in the 15th
century, a larger market began to appear for printed works. With mass
printing, the profit potential from mass marketing was recognized and, almost
immediately, some works were "popular" enough to be pirated. The idea of
proprietary ownership was quickly extended to copies as well as to the original
manuscript…hence the term "copyright." At this time, however, the property
right was applied to bound copies of books, and publishers rather than authors
controlled legal rights over publication and distribution.
This is logical if one considers that books and copies were perceived to be
properties of trade, and that the first copyright laws aimed to regulate no more
than the trade aspects of book publishing. The Royal Charter, for example,
given to London-based Stationers' Company in 1557, granted a monopoly right
to publishers. The Royal Charter was a precursor to modern copyright
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laws and established the "property" aspect of printed works. Once registered
and printed, a book became the property of the publisher. In this way, what the
Charter protected was the market, or the profit-making trade. The fact that
books were based on intellectual activities was not yet a consideration. Despite
the growing recognition of authorship rights and the importance of knowledge
and ideas, modern copyright laws still maintain this aspect of trade regulation.
The monopoly, however, broke down as the demand for books and regional
piracy increased substantially and the market regulation based on the Charter
became ineffective and was abandoned. By 1710, publishing and book trading
was an important profit-making activity, and interested parties demanded
statutory protection of their rights to secure markets for their properties.
England's Statute of Anne in 1710 laid down the first terms of copyright,
limited its application to 14 years, and set out infringement penalties. Although
the statute also professed to protect impoverished authors during the Age of
Enlightenment by signaling the assertion of their rights, the statute met with
vigorous piracy originating in Scotland and Ireland—and later in Australia and
the U.S. after copyright law was expanded to Scotland and Ireland. This
prompted a series of copyright laws that modified and strengthened the terms
of copyright protection. The benchmarks of copyright history outlined in
figure 5.1 show that a growing market and potential for rewards has always
been the driving force behind the struggle for copyright protection. It is also
important to remember that illegal copies became an issue only when
reproduction technology became sufficiently advanced. The invention of
printing presses, photocopiers, and now digital copying technologies have
periodically brought the issue to the forefront. But the market environment has
not changed significantly, and the digital marketplace does not present any
new issues that demand a complete revision in intellectual property laws as
some have argued.
Since the Statute of Anne, three major developments have occurred in modern
copyright laws. First, the intrinsic rights of authors have become increasingly
recognized. Although the Royal Charter and the Statute of Anne established
authors' rights, they were geared more toward protecting publishing houses
from pirates.

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Second, the recognition that foreign market piracy is a substantial economic
issue has resulted in international copyright agreements. The Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (the Berne
Convention) was established in 1886 and its most recent revision (the 1971
Paris text) is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) (http://www.wipo.org). A work copyrighted in one country is also
protected in other countries by the Berne Convention, as long as these
countries are signatories to the Convention. There are other international
copyright agreements including the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC),
which allows signatory countries to specify formalities such as copyright
notice and registration. Although the U.S. was the primary advocate for the
UCC, this and other agreements are overshadowed by the Berne Convention
and the WIPO.
And third, modern laws have extended their protection to all types of
intellectual properties to include paintings, musical scores, photographs,
recordings, and performing arts. Since knowledge became the most important
economic asset during the Industrial Revolution, the attempt to balance private
property rights against public benefits to stimulate economic development
have frequently resulted in clashes between the right of the author and the goal
of economic progress.
Figure 5.1 Timeline in the development of copyright.

Page 183
The Authorship Aspect of Copyright

After an idea is attached to a physical object, for example when it has been set
down on paper, establishing the ownership of that object is a legal question
that most legal regimes are quite accustomed to dealing with. Throughout the
history of copyright laws, the ownership right to an object to which an idea is
attached has been a far less contentious issue than the question of authorship
right to an idea. When one wrote down public speeches of Plato, for example,
the manuscripts belonged to the transcriber, not the author, Plato. The former
could legally duplicate and sell the speeches. Historical records do not in fact
show whether the author or the government objected to this practice or
recognized the issue of authorship at all. When authorship is not asserted,
copying speeches could by no means be considered an act of theft.
Due to the property aspect of intellectual properties, copyright laws have
evolved as a trade regulation. Intellectual properties have characteristics unlike
other physical properties, however, and accordingly copyright laws are
enforced differently. Damage awards for copyright theft, for example, are
based on actual and potential market loss inflicted by the theft, not the
recovery of the stolen property itself. In fact, as mentioned previously, stolen
property—that is, unauthorized copies—is destroyed, not returned. More
importantly, ideas and knowledge have so-called public goods characteristics,
where the social gains may outweigh the private gains if freely available. At an
extreme position are those who believe that ideas cannot be possessed,
confined, or exclusively appropriated. As Thomas Jefferson said, "inventions
cannot in nature be a subject of property."
As a result, the current debate on copyright protection in the electronic
marketplace mainly centers on whether authors have the moral right to control
every aspect of their works, or whether the public have the right to access this
information. A clear understanding of this issue is needed before one can
evaluate various positions on copyright protection in electronic commerce.
Modern copyright laws accept the premise that authors who provide content
should be rewarded. This represents the changing view that the main
Page 184
emphasis in providing copyright protection is not just "protecting the market,"
but "creating incentives." Although the right of authors was relatively
inconsequential in early copyright laws, in the 18th century countries in
Continental Europe began to advocate natural and moral rights of creators as
inalienable rights. In today's age when the expressive medium is no longer
limited to paper and proprietary characteristics have become uncertain,
authorship of an idea takes on even greater significance.
Although proponents of authorship emphasize maximizing authors' rights by
controlling all aspects of intellectual properties, this goal contradicts the
professed goal of intellectual property right laws to promote society's welfare,
and often faces difficulties in collecting payments. A sale of a book entitles the
buyer to rent, resell, and give it away as he or she sees fit, even though that
will prevent the content owner from selling another copy. Because copyright in
the age of printing was primarily a property law pertaining to physical books,
the first sale doctrine applies to a sale of a book even though the content owner
does not transfer the copyright through the sale. Even when there is no dispute
regarding payments, copyright holders often lack means to monitor and control
such activities. ASCAP and BMI, for example, rely on a complex formula to
determine payments for copyright holders, because counting every instance of
broadcast and performance of a copyrighted work is impossible. Digital
technologies and the electronic marketplace give content owners means to
control and monitor every aspect of consumer usage. As a result, the desire to
control copyrights often coincides with the intent to maximize authors' moral
rights that give content owners unrestricted control over their creations. New
technical means to expand copyright control, however, face challenges from
various uses of copyrighted works considered to be "fair" and a benefit society
as a whole.
Public Interest
The expanding scope of copyright based on moral rights of authors is not

always consistent with some purposes of copyright law. The public interest
aspect of intellectual property rights, for example, was set forth in the U.S.
Constitution's mandate to "promote the progress of science and useful arts,"
Page 185
which became the basis of granting exclusive rights to inventors and authors. It
reflects the recognition of the importance of authorship and intellectual
activities in ensuring a society's progress. To promote this goal is to
acknowledge that information and ideas have the characteristics of public
goods. The transfer and dissemination of copyrightable materials—that is,
change of ownership—is clearly in society's best interest. To encourage
productive activity, authors do need incentives such as profits, but keeping
ideas out of circulation due to an overly rigid system that is highly
unproductive. Therefore, modern copyright laws have become far more than
trade regulations; they also attempt to act as incentive mechanisms that
balance private and social interests.
In its role as a mechanism regulating business practices, the protective and
regulatory aspects of copyright law are mainly concerned with the business
aspects of reproducing and distributing the physical product. As an incentive
mechanism, however, copyright law carefully selects what it does and does not
protect.
First, works containing no original authorship are not protected. Therefore,
commonly known facts, lists, or tables cannot be copyrighted. A later section
discusses the implication of this for databases, which often contain a collection
of facts. Second, a fair use is not a copyright infringement. A fair use is
specifically permitted to avoid a rigid application of a copyright statute if it
stifles other intellectual activities such as criticism, comment, reporting,
teaching, or research. A rigid application of moral rights to digital products
will compromise society's need to foster intellectual activities, not to speak of
the right to free speech. New copyright regimes, therefore, must continue to
balance incentives for both private and social objectives. Furthermore, new
copyright regimes should not be restricted to legal definitions of what
copyright is and is not. To circumvent the first sale doctrine, for example,
software vendors use licensing rather than sales so that the vendors rely on
contractual laws rather than copyright laws for protection. Although legal
ramifications of copyright and contract laws may differ, the market is the same
and needs a consistent legal framework. This at the least demonstrates the need
for a broader incentive mechanism that can deal with all modes of "selling"
digital products.

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5.2. The Nuts and Bolts of Copyrights
Anyone who creates a work covered by copyright law (see the following
section) and fixes it on a substantially permanent medium automatically
possesses the copyright. Under current laws, a copyright is obtained as soon as
a work is created and fixed in a medium. Unlike patents, authors do not need
to claim their copyright, register, publish, or give copyright notices on their
work. Forms of copyright notice (for example, "C in a circle") are optional for
works published on and after March 1, 1989. Through agreements such as the
Berne Convention, copyright is acknowledged internationally as well, although
patents have to be filed individually for each country. Unless a specific
contract transferring the right is drawn up, the copyright belongs to the actual
authors. Full-time employment may constitute such a contractual situation,
known as "work for hire," where employers may own the copyright for the
material created. For other specially commissioned works for hire, a written
and signed agreement is required.
Objects Covered by Copyright
U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C.) grants copyright protection for works of
authorship in the following cases:
● Literary works including books, magazines, news articles, manuals,
catalogs, advertising words, computer software, and compilations such
as directories and databases
● Musical works including accompanying words
● Dramatic works including accompanying music
● Pantomimes and choreographic works
● Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works including maps and fine arts
● Motion pictures and other audiovisual works

● Sound recordings
● Architectural works
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Terms of Copyright
For works created in 1978 or later, the term of copyright is the author's life
plus 50 years after the author's death. In the case of corporate-authored works,
the term is 75 years after publication or 100 years from creation. Although
works created before 1978 were governed by different laws, such works were
given a term of 75 years from their creation.
Works That Cannot be Copyrighted
Works that do not warrant copyrights are as follows:

● Works are not protected if they are not "fixed" on a sufficiently
permanent medium. This requirement is lax enough to include
handwritten or typed documents as "fixed" forms of authorship.
● Only original works are protected. The "originality" requirement is also
fairly flexible. Unlike patents, works dealing with the same subject or
idea can be copyrighted as long as each work has a minimum degree of
originality.
● When works incorporate preexisting material, only the original portion
is covered by the copyright. If a journal contains articles copyrighted by
individual authors, the act of collection is copyrighted as the original
work.
● Facts cannot be copyrighted. Therefore, compilations of names and
addresses publicly available, such as the telephone book, cannot be
copyrighted. To copyright such material and databases, copyright law
requires a certain originality in selection, organization, and arrangement
of the data. Even then, only the original aspects are protected; the facts
still are not protected. Alphabetic ordering is not considered original.
Similarly, expressions that have become standard techniques for
creating a particular type of work are in the public domain.
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● Works in the public domain are not protected. Works can enter the
public domain when their copyright expires. Due to changing copyright
laws, however, a careful evaluation is needed to determine whether a
work is in the public domain. Previously a failure to renew or to give
proper copyright notice resulted in the loss of a copyright, for example.
New laws, however, do not require copyright renewal. Also, works
created after March 1, 1989, do not need to include copyright notice,
registration, or deposit to be protected under copyright law. Current U.S.
law still provides, however, that registration and deposit of the work
with the Copyright Office is a prerequisite to the filing of an
infringement suit in federal court (see fig. 5.2). Moreover, certain
advantageous remedies are only available for infringements that occur
after registration and deposit. Because of the Berne Convention, these
formalities are not applicable to foreign nationals, and probably will
have to be removed entirely from U.S. law before it is in full compliance
with the Convention.
● If a work is created by the U.S. government, it is automatically in the
public domain because government works cannot be copyrighted. This
only applies to the federal government. State governments can copyright
their documents. Laws and legislation of both federal and state
governments may not be copyrighted. The only statutory exception is
for data produced by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, which are
copyrighted under the Standard Reference Data Act (15 U.S.C. 290e). A
gray area is when the U.S. government provides funding for
independent contractors. Such works are copyrighted by contractors, but
the copyright can be transferred to the government.
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Figure 5.2 U.S. Copyright Office home page. Unlike patents and trademarks
which are administered by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
(http://www.uspto.gov), U.S. Copyright Office is a branch of the Library of
Congress (http:// lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/resces.html).
Specific Rights of Authors Granted by Copyright
Rights of authors granted under copyright law include the following seven
areas. Correspondingly, copyright infringement occurs when someone is
engaged in any of these activities without authorization from the authors. The
seven rights include the following:
● Reproduction right to copy, duplicate, transcribe, or imitate the work in
fixed form
● Adaptive right to modify and create derivative works
● Distribution right to distribute the work by sale, rental, lease, or lending
● Performance right to perform the work in public or to transmit to the

public
● Display right to show a copy of work in public
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● Paternity right to claim (or disclaim) authorship
● Integrity right to prevent distorting or destroying one's work.
The last two rights—paternity and integrity—were not recognized in the U.S.
when it adhered to the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC), but in 1988
the U.S. joined the Berne Convention, which recognizes all seven rights of
authors. Both paternity and integrity rights pertain to the moral rights of
authors discussed in the previous section. The U.S. opted out of the full moral
rights provisions of the Berne Convention, except that the Congress did amend
U.S. copyright law to provide limited paternity and integrity rights for the
visual arts.
Fair Use Doctrine
Even when a work is fully protected by copyright law, certain uses are
considered to be within the fair use rule and do not constitute an infringement
of the author's exclusive rights. A fair use of a copyrighted work is allowed for
purposes such as "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching including
multiple copies for classroom use, scholarship, or research."
In determining whether a particular case falls within the fair use rule, Congress
has set out the following four guiding principles (17 U.S.C. 107):
1. The purpose and character of the use. If the use is for non-profit
educational purposes, it falls within the fair use rule. Even when the use
is commercial, however, a "productive" use may be allowed. A firm
may use one of Consumer Reports' reviews (copyrighted by its
publisher, Consumers Union) in its advertising as it "educates"
consumers (Consumers Union v. General Signal Corp., 2nd Cir. 1983).
Such interpretation is used by courts to balance incentives for content
providers and society's interests.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work. If a work is more factual than
artistic, its use is more likely to be judged as a fair use. Also,

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----------- unpublished works are protected from fair use more than published
works because an infringement may deprive the author of publishing in
the first place and because it interferes with the author's right not to
publish.
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as a whole. The substantiality standard dictates that
even when a small amount of a copyrighted work is used, it will be an
infringement if that portion is qualitatively substantial.
4. The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work. This is by far the most important factor to consider
when evaluating the fair use rule. In short, fair use may be tolerated only
if it does not interfere with the author's marketability or profits. This
principle relates to a "potential," not an actual, market. Therefore, even
if an author does not market a work, its potential market is protected.
This also includes instances where an author markets the product only in
one market—for example, in a printed form but not in a digital form,
which is a potential market.
Other Intellectual Property Laws
Besides literary and artistic activities protected by copyright, other types of

intellectual activities are protected by three major laws: Patent law deals with
inventions that have useful functions; trademark law gives a monopoly right to
any word, name, symbol, or device used to identify and distinguish one's
product or service; and trade secret law protects methods, processes, formulas,
and any information maintained as a secret. The difference between patent and
copyright can be summarized, using the language of the U.S. Constitution, as
one that distinguishes "science" from "useful arts" and "inventors" from
"authors." A patentable object embodies some useful idea that results in a
novel and improved function, although a copyrighted work is simply the
medium for transferring an idea. The function or process described in a
copyright work, therefore, cannot be protected, unless it is patented.
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5.3. Copyright Protection and Digital Products

The three primary rights of authors granted under copyright
law—reproduction, distribution, and adaptive rights—are all clearly
interrelated. Books, for example, are reproduced with the intent to sell or
distribute. Adaptive or derivative works involve a reproduction of a portion of
the original work. Essentially, all three rights are integral parts of the overall
copyright protection process.
This intertwined relationship is accentuated in the case of digital products
because of the way they are transmitted and used. Downloading or viewing a
digital file automatically involves copying and reproducing it, just as servers
and clients on the Internet often retain copies. An act of distribution on the
Internet is often accomplished through reproduction. In other words, one
aspect of using a digital file overlaps with other activities, affecting many of
the exclusive rights simultaneously. (See Lemley, 1996a for the implications
of overlapping copyrights on the Internet.) For clarity, however, this
discussion distinguishes three aspects of using digital products that are relevant
to copyright protection and which correspond to the three unique
characteristics of digital products discussed earlier in Chapter 2:
reproducibility, transmutability, and indestructibility.
Reproduction
As shown in the history of copyright law, the need for change in copyright
protection has arisen historically because of increased ease of mass
reproduction of an original work. With the advent of the digital world, concern
has once again cropped up. Unlike earlier instances, however, the same
technology is now available to both producers and consumers. When printing
presses were first introduced, only entrepreneurs with significant capital would
engage in reproduction. As a result, unauthorized reproduction in book
publishing was mostly done by other publishers, not by consumers, and this
fact often gave copyright enforcers an easy way to identify and locate
infringers. Even with
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photocopiers, mass reproduction for the commercial market has been limited
to overseas publishers. For some books, for example, it may be cheaper to buy
than to photocopy. Unlike photocopying, however, digital reproduction is
easy, fast, and does not result in quality degradation.
In electronic commerce, then, the issue is to what extent the reproduction
technology available to consumers will erode the market to the detriment of
content owners. When there is no market erosion, control over reproduction is
largely meaningless. Reproduction without reselling or distributing seems
harmless and appears to fall under the fair use guideline. Still, unauthorized
reproduction by consumers is a complicated issue in electronic commerce.
Legal experts have not yet determined whether viewing a World Wide Web
page constitutes copying; after all, any connection over a network involves
downloading a copy of files. If a hard copy of that file is printed, does this
represent another unauthorized reproduction by the consumer? Because neither
of these cases involve reselling, interpreting these activities as "unauthorized
reproduction" rather than "fair use" goes too far in the interest of protecting
copyrights. Extending the definition of reproduction and seeking a blanket
protection against it does not reflect economic reality—the impact on the
market.
On the other hand, copying files for use on other computers may or may not be
considered fair use. This issue is usually dealt with via site or enterprise
licensing, which specifies the number of machines and users allowed under the
licensing contract. Because of the distributional aspect of licensing, the next
section discusses this case.
Reproductions on the Internet
A reproduction by definition is a copy of an original work fixed on a

sufficiently permanent medium. Unfortunately, there is great confusion over
what constitutes a fixable and permanent medium when a digital product is
transmitted over the Net. If a user makes a copy using a "copy" or "duplicate"
command, the exclusive right to reproduce granted by copyright law
undeniably applies. Because of the nature of the Internet and computer usage,
however, many types of copies are made during transmission and display.
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Depending on how one interprets the requirements of the law regarding
"fixation" and "permanency," various activities of Internet communication
may actually violate copyright law. Examples of these activities include the
following:
● RAM or screen copies. When a file is displayed on a computer screen or
is used by a computer program, a temporary copy is placed in the
internal RAM memory of the computer.
● Deleted but not-erased copies. When a file is deleted from a computer
hard disk, the file is not actually erased but remains until it is
overwritten by the computer for some other file. Similarly, most e-mail
programs may download a message from an e-mail server but leave a
copy on the server. Also, sending an e-mail leaves a copy in the Out
folder until it is deleted.
● Copies in transition. When a digital file is sent over the network, some
copies may be made by intermediaries who route and forward the file
for the purpose of buffering, monitoring, or record-keeping. If RAM
copies are deemed to be reproductions, these copies in transition may
also be considered reproductions.
● Web cache copies. Most web browsers automatically store accessed
pages in cache for a limited period of time.
Whether these copies can be treated as reproductions that infringe any
copyright depends on the way the traditional definition of copying is applied to
the digital world. Several court cases suggest that these copies are not fixed
and are therefore not considered to constitute copyright infringement. (For
RAM copies, see Apple Computer v. Formula International, 594 F. Supp. 617
(C.D. Cal. 1984); for screen copies, see NFLC, Inc. v. Devcom Mid-America,
Inc., 33 U.S.P.Q2d 1629 (7th Cir. 1995) and Stern Elec. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d
852 (2d Cir. 1982).) In recent cases—MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer,
991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993); Triad Systems Corp. v. Southeastern Express
Co. (9th Cir. 1995)—the court found copies in RAM to be fixed and as such
constitute reproductions governed by the copyright law. Should such an
interpretation prevail, all four preceding examples will violate existing
copyright law.

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Economic Implications of Reproduction
While clear legal definitions need to be established, the process takes time and
many wrong conclusions will be reached. Instead, an economic approach
toward protecting copyrights in the digital world should be based on the
market. Reproduction without actual or intended distribution does not affect
the size of the market for the copyrighted work. The control over reproduction
therefore becomes an issue only when linked with distribution. In the
paper-based world, reproduction and distribution are fundamentally related as
the term "reproduction" itself is a product of the age of the printing press. In
many cases, digital reproduction is required for uses other than distribution.
A pertinent question in electronic commerce is whether today's reproduction
technology will lead to widespread, unauthorized distribution. If people do not
distribute or transmit copies, controlling reproduction might have legal
implications but be economically unnecessary. In this case, it may be sufficient
to identify a copy so that when copies are circulated it is possible to verify
whether they are unauthorized reproductions. Market control mechanisms
discouraging unauthorized copies in this vein may be sufficient. Proposals to
control every aspect of digital reproduction, using copyright arguments, will
have unintended effects on other uses of digital products.
Resale and Distribution

In terms of the economic effects of copyrights, the act of making copies is
irrelevant unless it is accompanied by an infringement on the owner's
exclusive right to distribute copies. A person may make numerous backup
copies, but this would not affect the size of the product's market if the copies
are not distributed. Therefore, an act of reproduction need not be controlled by
expensive technologies or preempted by copyrights and contracts when it does
not have an impact on the author's market.
To determine what constitutes distribution is relatively simple although there
are some issues that remain to be settled. Section 106 of the U.S. copyright law
(17 U.S.C. §106) grants the right to distribute copies "to the public
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by sale or other transfer of ownership" to the owner. Technical issues have
been raised regarding whether an Internet transmission can be considered a
distribution "to the public" and whether it constitutes a "transfer of
ownership." For both of these issues, Internet transmissions are considered to
be subject to the copyright law with minor changes. E-mailing a message to a
person, or posting it on a restricted-membership mailing list or on a
limited-access intranet web page, for example, may not amount to public
distribution subject to copyright law. Nevertheless, Internet distribution may
be considered public by the very nature of the medium. An automatic
forwarding program, for example, if used by most e-mailers, may quickly
result in "public distribution." Also, the tangible object being transferred (for
example, the e-mail message) consists of bits of ones and zeros that are
indistinguishable, unlike pirate copies of a book, but which physically exist on
the receiving end unlike over-the-air broadcasts. These differences from
traditional forms of distribution may be tackled by minor changes in the
definition of what constitutes distribution.
Regardless of whether an Internet transmission constitutes a public
distribution, the major concern is the erosion of the owner's market due to
unauthorized distribution of a copyrighted work. Whether the copy is
distributed free or for a price is immaterial in deciding copyright infringement
as long as the receiver of the copy is a potential customer of the copyright
owner. If so, any unauthorized distribution over the Internet will deprive the
owner of their customers. Resale or distribution with unauthorized duplication
clearly falls within the boundary of traditional copyright protection, and can be
protected through more vigorous enforcement of the law or through the use of
technology without changing the existing legal framework. The problem is not
so simple, however, when one resells a digital product without reproduction.
Resale and the First Sale Doctrine
Resale without reproduction, just like lending a book to a third party, is

permitted under the first sale doctrine, but has profound implications in
electronic commerce. The first sale doctrine allows a buyer who has purchased
a copy of a copyrighted work to sell, give away, or lend it to other people.
Page 197
Suppose, however, that Alice has discovered a mathematical formula that can
predict the interest rate a year from now. The safest way to sell the formula
would be to write it in a computer program so that Alice's customers could not
know the formula but still use it to predict interest rates. But imagine that Bob
buys the program, calculates next year's interest rate, and then resells the
program to Charlie on the Internet. Then Charlie repeats the same process and
sells the program to Dan, and so on. With the speed of the Internet, Alice may
lose all her customers in a matter of days or even hours. One digital product
can be resold an infinite number of times within a short time, completely
destroying the market for the seller. (A separate issue may arise if Bob sells
Charlie the calculated interest rate, but not the program.) Although the same
problem exists with books and magazines, the far shorter transmission speed
for digital products makes the problem far more significant. Consequently, the
first sale doctrine will be detrimental in electronic commerce, at least
theoretically.
The high transaction speed on the Internet often prompts software vendors to
include a specific prohibition of resale in their copyright notices. Alternatively,
vendors prefer to use licensing contracts rather than sales. Under a licensing
scenario, vendors can specify designated users and prohibit any kind of
transfer of the product because the terms and rights of licensing are governed
by contract laws different from copyright laws.
For many digital products, resale always involves reproduction. An
information product can be consumed (read) and resold, for example, because
consuming the information does not affect the product physically. Requiring
consumers to destroy their copy before forwarding or reselling it to another
person would still leave a copy because reading and viewing information
leaves an image (or knowledge) in one's mind. In such cases, reselling may be
prohibited outright, abandoning the first sale doctrine granted under the current
copyright law.
Whether one can legally prohibit the resale of a digital product is still
uncertain. In case of a functional product—for example, a computer
program—which can produce something, it is also unclear how these two

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products should be treated. In any case, prohibiting resale will have important
implications in terms of market efficiency. When buyers are not satisfied with
a product, for example, resale in the second-hand market is an alternative to
returning the product to the seller, as discussed in Chapter 4, "Quality
Uncertainty and Market Efficiency." If sellers do not provide an appropriate
return policy or warranty, buyers should be allowed a remedy such as reselling
the product.
If resale is permitted, the market erosion is still more significant for some
digital products than others. Time-independent single-use products—for
example, the average weather information in Austin, Texas—can find buyers
all year round, making them susceptible for resale. Theoretically, the producer
could only sell one copy. On the other hand, a time-dependent product loses its
value rapidly, which may encourage consumers to buy the product directly
from the producer instead of waiting to buy second-hand. Multiple-use
products such as computer programs also resist reselling as their product life is
longer than single-use products.
This indicates that one alternative to the wholesale revision of the law is for
the sellers to change their product choices and marketing strategies based on
consumers' uses of information products. Products, for example, could be
converted into time-dependent multiple-use products. Instead of selling
weather information for one city, one could sell an encyclopedic computer
program about weather. Another means to avoid the economic consequences
from reselling is to customize products and provide frequent updates.
Personalized products, by definition, are useless for persons other than those
for whom they are intended. These and other market-based solutions to
copyright protection are discussed in more detail in section entitled "Market
Protection Through Business Strategies."
Resale Prevention and Pricing

An important consideration in allowing consumer resale is the balance
between the seller's power of discriminatory pricing and the buyer's ability to
arbitrage. Consumer arbitrage refers to their buying and selling among
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themselves. If Alice tries to charge Bob $20 for a product that she sells for $10
to Charlie, for example, Charlie could buy two from Alice and sell one to Bob
at, say, $15. The gains accrued to Bob and Charlie from such an arbitrage are
what Alice could make for herself if she had a means to prevent the arbitrage.
This kind of arbitrage can be prevented if Bob and Charlie live far apart, and
the transportation cost does not justify arbitraging. When there is no protection
against consumer arbitrage, Alice can only charge a uniform price.
Resale is one form of consumer arbitrage, and even a firm with perfect demand
information cannot discriminate between consumers if buyers can transfer
products among themselves. As will be discussed in Chapter 8 in connection
with digital product pricing, sellers should be concerned about the lowered
ability to price-discriminate when allowing resale. Therefore, there is an
additional benefit from preventing consumer resale, and, depending on the size
of this benefit, highly costly methods and technologies to protect copyrights
might be feasible. This issue is critical if the seller wants to charge different
prices for different consumer groups (for the same product). On the other hand,
consumers do need to be able to preserve their leverage against sellers'
discriminatory prices. Clearly, the threats and opportunities inherent in
allowing or disallowing the resale of digital products involve not just
copyrights but also product pricing, consumer welfare, and the efficiency of a
market.
Although copyrighted products are sold at per-copy prices to consumers, they
are often given away free to radio and TV stations; the latter, however, pay
per-play royalties. A recorded song may be played an unlimited number of
times by a consumer who purchases it on a CD. A radio station, however, must
pay based on the number of times it plays the song on the airwaves. Because of
practical difficulties in measuring usage, the music industry relies on the
blanket license for stations and formula for distributing payments among
copyright holders based on measured popularity of each song. The American
Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP;
http://www.visualradio.com/ascap) and Broadcast Musicians Incorporated
(BMI; http://bmi.com) administer this complex operation. In electronic
commerce,
Page 200
pricing and distributing payments will be technically superior and more
equitable. Each use of an online article will be measured and payments can be
calculated based on real—not sampled—usage or popularity. Theoretically,
consumers can be required to pay per-play royalties rather than a direct sale
price.
Finally, a major portion of reproduction cost for a digital product may be
copyright payment. Although distribution and marketing costs will be
substantial due to the increasing number of products offered in the worldwide
digital market, copyright holders have means to verify actual usage for their
songs and articles. If prices were to be determined by production costs and
user demand, authors' rights and popularity of their products would become
the most significant factors in pricing.
Content Control
Even more than reproduction and resale and distribution, content control will
be the most important aspect in copyright protection for digital products.
Reorganizing and modifying a digital file is much easier than altering and
reproducing a non-digital work. As digital product development already
emphasizes differentiation and customization, as will be discussed in Chapter
8, illegal use of copyrighted works will in all probability focus on partial
copying and derivative works. Most World Wide Web users, for example,
routinely select and copy a portion of a web page—for example, a graphic file
or a list—to use on their own web pages. Currently, it is not clear whether
these materials are copyrighted or in the public domain, although the
Copyright Office routinely accepts copyright registration for web pages. Also,
web documents usually consist of many sub-documents, so it is often difficult
to access the whole document. Copying and downloading is done only on a
portion of a work.
Preserving the integrity of a digital product becomes harder than in the case of
physical intellectual properties because of the ease of changing the content of
an electronic file. Exact copies are easy to identify, but changes or damages
can occur either by accident or by design. Recent developments in

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cryptographic technologies have now made it easier to preserve the integrity of
a digital product. Various authentication technologies have been developed for
documenting purposes and to prevent accidental changes. Major types are
encryption, hashing, and digital time-stamping.
The emphasis on cryptographic technologies stems from the fear of tampering
and the desire to preserve the integrity of a digital product. But is the
transmutability of digital products only a liability for sellers? To the contrary,
digital products are more valuable than physical products because of their
malleability. Suppose that you have completed a masterpiece painting. The
copyright law gives you the right to make derivative works from the painting.
To incorporate a portion of the painting, however, you need to re-draw it,
which might take as much time and effort as the first time. On the other hand,
a digital masterpiece can be copied effortlessly. In other words, after a product
is produced, subsequent costs for derivative works could be minimal.
Derivative works can be thought of as benefits of annual crops from owning an
agricultural land, or annual offspring gained from owning cattle. Digital
products have comparably smaller annual expenses to reap such benefits.
Therefore, authors may rely on the transmutability of digital products to
maximize the adaptive right granted under the copyright law by rearranging,
modifying, and customizing for different markets. In this case, the primary
objective as an author is to exploit the nature of digital products by changing
the content rather than maintaining it by using cumbersome technologies and
regulations.
In addition to the lowered cost of derivative works, differentiating products
also has an added benefit of preventing copyright violations because, as
discussed earlier, personalized products resist distribution. The transmutability,
therefore, counters the ill effects of reproducibility and indestructibility of
digital products. Personal Journal (http:// bis.dowjones.com/ pj.html), for
example, a personalized electronic edition of The Wall Street Journal, consists
of news and information about companies specifically chosen by a subscriber,
which might not be of great value to other potential subscribers who follow
different sets of companies. Without any legal maneuvering, personalizing
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digital products lowers the possibility of copyright infringement by
discouraging consumers from sharing the product. It is a prime example of
dealing with copyright problems by actively adapting to the digital product
environment.
5.4. Market Protection Through Business Strategies

By granting a monopoly power in the form of copyrights, society's intention is
to protect an author's market from being eroded or stolen by others. When the
market is not protected from pirates who do not share the initial cost of
developing the product, authors have a reduced incentive to develop a product,
at least for commercial reasons. This is the same argument used to advocate
that academic research has to be funded by governments if quality products are
desired, because non-profit intellectual activities are not protected.
Analysis based on product characteristics, however, reveals that many types of
products may actually make the copyright protection issue null and void,
turning their vulnerability of easy modification into a means to increase profit
through product differentiation. Clearly, a tight control over all aspects of
copyrights is not always most efficient. If the result is the creation of
complacent regulated monopolists, it may instead fail to give incentives to
producers to update information or to develop interactive and innovative
products. Also, from the consumers' point of view, personal arbitrage via
reselling is an important leverage against sellers' price discrimination. A more
balanced approach can only be achieved after considering all the economic
implications in the market. For a practical and viable solution for copyright
protection in the digital world, sellers and policymakers need to consider the
unique types of products and consumer usage. Depending on its type, some
products may need more protection than others.
Interactive service providers clearly represent one end of the extreme with the
least concern for copyright infringement. In actual fact, these services may not
have applicable copyright protection in the first place. Among
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non-interactive products, time-dependent products represent the bulk of the
primary information products available on the Internet. For these products,
digital copyright does not need to be much different from non-digital copyright
because the incentive for distribution is minimal, and because, even if there is
some incentive, its effect on market will not be too great. Similarly, single-use
products such as search results are personalized and situation-specific, and
therefore of little value to other people except the buyer. Other information
products that are more valuable if few people have them will not be shared at
all.
On the opposite end of the extreme are music, software, and computer games.
Digital copyright protection is critical for these time-independent, multiuse
products. Nevertheless, sellers can still change consumer usage of these
products so that they become time-dependent. As evident in the physical
product world, frequent updates and releases of new and improved versions
help this process. Similarly, with some effective but not too cumbersome
technologies, short-run duplication can be prevented. The current reluctance of
content owners to digitize their products and sell them on the Internet has more
to do with lack of technologies and security in transmission speed, payment
system, and other market services, than with concern about copyright. In sum,
an extensive revision of copyright laws is not warranted when product
strategies based on consumer behaviors are implemented.
A separate issue exists in the case of computer software. The gist of the issue
is whether copyright or patent protection is more suitable to software. In
general, the consensus seems to be that copyright is the most effective means
to protect software. Some software, however, has been recognized as being
used to bring new and useful functions that can be protected by patents. The
debate involves comparing a number of different factors. Copyright applies
immediately, and a patent takes time to establish and is quite expensive to
obtain. Also, a patent requires a great deal more in terms of originality than
does a copyright. As a result, the protective right granted under patent law is in
general stronger than that obtained under copyright law. This said, current
laws are inadequate to deal with many facets of computer software, and some

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argue in favor of a new mechanism to protect software (Samuelson et al.,
1994). The industry practices attempt to sidestep the whole issue of copyright
versus patent protection for software by heavily using licensing agreements
rather than sales to distribute the product. Through licensing, software vendors
maintain the ownership of the product and can impose various restrictions
regarding the use of their products. A proper legal protection for software
would represent a legitimate instance to rethink copyright laws for electronic
commerce.
5.5. Policy Implications

The concern over protecting authors' rights in the digital marketplace has not
escaped the attention of the relevant policymakers. The legislation on
copyright considered by the Congress during its 1996 session (S. 1284; H.R.
2441) would have made any electronic copy of copyrighted material an
infringement and also would have restricted the applicability of the fair use
rule in the case of digital products. These bills reflect the position of software
makers, publishers, and entertainment companies, represented by the Creative
Incentive Coalition (http://www.cic.org), that favors extending copyright
protection to electronic commerce. The general direction of the bill mirrors the
recommendations (known as the Lehman paper; see
http://www.uspto.gov/web/ipnii) made by the Working Group on Intellectual
Property Rights of the Information Infrastructure Task Force, which has been
widely criticized for taking the content owners' position.
Both the Working Group and the Creative Incentive Coalition maintain that
content owners will not be willing to provide quality information products on
the Internet unless suitable property rights are secured. Without content, the
Information Superhighway will be a long, winding, and above all, empty road.
And the presumed benefits from commercial use of the Information
Superhighway may not ever materialize. Unlike previous copyright legislation,
this will be the first time that the law is proactive, instead of reactive to
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the current threats to publishers' market control. The publishers' position is that
an extended copyright protection is a prerequisite for their participation in the
new electronic marketplace. The question to ask is whether digital markets are
sufficiently different from other markets to warrant exceptional copyright
protection.
This is not supported with enough evidence. On the contrary, the aspects of the
digital market currently perceived as shortcomings are the very advantages it
affords to the sellers. Customization and price discrimination possibilities as
well as the acquisition of consumer behavioral data actually shift the balance
in favor of the sellers in electronic commerce. Furthermore, the nature of
digital products provide many incentives for the sellers to innovate and
improve product and service selection and quality. As under any regulatory
regime, overprotection of a market can result in stagnation of economic
activity to the detriment of both the consumer and society.
Serious specific objections have been raised against the current proposal.
Among them are the following:
● Making a new category of author's right for browsing and digital
transmission
● Abolishing the first sale rule
● Limiting the scope of fair use
In each of these points, the current legislative effort seems to favor expanding
publishers' rights. Debates on whether such radical changes are warranted for
the digital marketplace will continue although the discussion in this chapter
indicates that market-oriented solutions may well work with a minimal change
in existing copyright laws.
Copyright and Antitrust Concerns
When a product has a network externality, the value of the product is increased
as more people use the same product. (See Chapter 3, "Internet Infrastructure
and Pricing," for a detailed discussion on the network externality.) As there are
more users, more products compatible and useful to the user will be offered. In
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many instances, the product becomes the standard to which all other products
must be compatible. A primary example is the computer operating system, for
which market Microsoft's Windows and related products dominate. More
computer programs are developed for Windows operating systems than
Macintosh or Unix operating systems because there are more users in the
Windows market.
When a product becomes a de facto standard and is protected by copyright, its
producer indeed enjoys a monopoly market power. In many cases, such a
monopoly is encouraged to minimize duplicative costs of having competing
standards. That monopoly, however, is often regulated in exchange for its
monopoly power. In today's Internet environment, where regulation is rejected
from all sides, a dominant firm will have an unrestricted market power after its
product becomes the standard. Copyrights for its product in turn protect its
monopoly position unless other firms are allowed to license it.
Some products such as the Internet communications protocol have been
developed as an industry standard which is not copyrighted. But, because of
the network externality, many privately developed computer-related products
exhibit the tendency to become a dominant, standard product in each market.
An antitrust remedy for such a market needs to consider the role played by
copyrights. To deny copyrights will certainly involve the loss of development
costs and other opportunity costs for the firm. Alternatively, governments may
require a kind of compulsory licensing to competitors or developers of related
products. A real antitrust concern arises, however, when the dominant firm
uses its position to strengthen its market power in other markets.
Antitrust remedies are notoriously slow and inadequate. In the context of
network externalities, even traditional antitrust laws may prove to be
ineffective (Lemley, 1996b). Section 2 of the Sherman Act, for example,
prohibits any firm's monopolization through anticompetitive means. The
problem, however, is to show the evidence for anticompetitive conduct when
the nature of products are such that monopolization occurs seemingly as a
normal course of product development, and the basis of its market power is the
copyright. Similarly, Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits conspiratorial
activities
Page 207
among competitors, which may have substantial adverse effect on competition.
To apply the rule aggressively would mean to prevent any standard-setting
initiative on the part of the firms when standardization would benefit
consumers and society as a whole. On the other hand, to promote
industry-wide standardization often means eliminating copyrights. Indeed,
some standard-setting organizations require their members to denounce any
copyright claim as a condition of participation.
Of course, being a dominant firm has its own disadvantages. A market leader
can be leapfrogged, for example, by a new firm with an innovative product
that becomes a new standard. The leader finds it difficult to abandon its
product because of its sunk costs, or it may suffer from its own success
because its product becomes unwieldy. Despite these down sides, however,
monopolistic firms whose products are protected by copyrights seem to pose a
significant threat to competition in electronic commerce.
5.6. Summary
Copyright in the Digital Age has become one of the hottest issues affecting the
future of electronic commerce. In the first place, the majority of digital
products fall into the range of expressions protected by copyright law. An
estimate by a computer software organization, although it has an obvious bias,
puts the cost of piracy on and off the Internet at several billion dollars a year.
An international effort to strengthen existing copyright laws was undertaken in
December, 1996 in Geneva for the first time in 25 years, organized by the
World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations agency in charge
of the Berne Convention. On the other hand, the culture of the Internet as a
free and unregulated communications medium has produced a strong
counter-argument for increased public access to information. Consumer groups
and a coalition of the free information movement warn that the new copyright
laws could retard the growth of the Internet and jeopardize the very future of
electronic commerce they intend to protect.

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This chapter has purposely emphasized the economic significance of copyright
protection. The ease in reproduction and distribution of any digital product has
given rise to widespread legal and technical issues. In response, copyright laws
have already been reinterpreted and revised, although sophisticated
technologies are being developed to control many aspects of the transmission
and usage of digital products. Because the ultimate goal of the copyright
statute is to protect the market, however, and thus the remuneration, of a
copyrighted work, any legal or technological solution should be evaluated in
terms of how well it protects the market. Under that criteria, certain product
choice strategies such as differentiation and customization naturally discourage
consumers from unauthorized reproduction and distribution of a digital
product. Market driven solutions such as these avoid the use of legal and
artificial market barriers, a fact that is desirable in terms of market efficiency.
Page 209
References
Barlow, J.P., 1993. Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on
the Global Net. Available at
http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/idea_economy.article.
Brinson, J.D. and M.F. Radcliffe, 1994. Intellectual Property Law Primer for
Multimedia Developers. Available at http://www.eff.org/pub/CAF/law/
ipprimer.
Carroll, T., 1994. Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright. Available via
anonymous FTP to rtfm.mit.edu /pub/usenet/news.answers/law/
CopyrightFAQ.
Gerovac, B., D.C. Carver and R.J. Solomon, 1996. Electronic Commerce and
Intellectual Property: Protect Revenues, Not Bits. Available at
http://far.mit.edu/Pubs /ec_ip/index.html.
Godwin, M., 1994. "When Copying Isn't Theft: How the Government
Stumbled in a `Hacker' Case." Internet World, Jan./Feb. 1994.
Gurnsey, John 1995. Copyright Theft. Aldershot, England: Aslib Gower.
Lemley, M.A., 1996a. "Dealing with Overlapping Copyrights on the Internet."
Mimeo. The School of Law, the University of Texas.
Lemley, M.A., 1996b. "Antitrust and the Internet: Standardization Problem."
Connecticut Law Review, 28(4): 1041_1094.
Losey, R., 1995. Practical and Legal Protection of Computer Databases.
Available at
http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/database_protection.paper
Page 210
Samuelson, Pamela, 1994. Legally Speaking: The NII Intellectual Property
Report. Available at
http://www.eff.org/pub/GII_NII/Govt_docs/HTML/ipwg_samuelson.html
Samuelson, P., R. Davis, M. Kapor, and J.H. Reichman, 1994. "A Manifesto
Concerning Legal Protection for Computer Programs." Columbia Law
Review, 94(8): 2308_2431.
Saunders, David 1992. Authorship and Copyright. London: Routledge.
Takeyama, Lisa N. 1994. "The Welfare Implications of Unauthorized
Reproduction of Intellectual Property in the Presence of Demand Network
Externalities." Journal of Industrial Economics, 17(2): 155.

Historical Development of Copyright Laws
Armstrong, E., 1990. Before Copyright: The French Book-Privilege System,

1498_1526. New York: Cambridge University Press,
Goldman, A., 1955. The History of U.S.A. Copyright Law Revision,
1901_1954. Washington, D.C.: Copyright Office, Library of Congress.
Bowker, R. R., 1912. Copyright: Its History and Its Law. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin. It gives "a summary of the principles and practice of copyright with
special reference to the American Code of 1909 and the British Act of 1911."
Davenport, N., 1993. United Kingdom Copyright & Design Protection: A
Brief History. Emsworth, Hampshire (England): Mason Publications. The
book follows the changes in copyright law introduced by successive acts from
1741 up to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Page 211
Patents and Economics

The theory of innovation studies the welfare implications of research and
innovation. Within this field, most economists' attention has gone to R&D and
patent races. Landes and Posner (1987) and Novos and Waldman (1984) are
exceptions.
Landes, W.M., and R.A. Posner, 1987. "Trademark Law: An Economic
Perspective." Journal of Law and Economics, 30: 265_309.
Novos, I.E., and M. Waldman, 1984. "The Effects of Increased Copyright
Protection: An Analytical Approach." Journal of Political Economy, 92:
236_46.
Hirshleifer, J., 1971. "The Private and Social Value of Information and the
Reward to Inventive Activity." American Economic Review, 61: 561_74.
Arrow, K.J., 1962. "Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for
Invention." In National Bureau of Economic Research, The Rate and Direction
of Inventive Activity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Internet Resources
Articles
Okerson, A., 1996. "Who Owns Digital Works?" Scientific American. (http://
www.sciam.com/ WEB/ 0796issue/0796okerson.html)
Dyson, E., 1995. "Intellectual Value." HotWired. (http://www.hotwired.com/
wired/3.07/features/dyson.html)
Barlow, J.P., 1996. A Cyberspace Independence Declaration. Barlow's
reaction to the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. (http://
www.netusa.net/ ~jmr/decind.html)
Page 212
Internet Copyright Sites
Electronic Frontier Foundation Intellectual Property Online Archive:

http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/.
The Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) Guide to Copyright:

http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/copyright/index.html.
The Information Law Web: Copyright Court Cases is at
http://seamless.com/rcl/things.html.
Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Copyright Mailing List Archive:

gopher://gopher.cni.org:70/11/cniwg/forums/cni-copyright
Texts of Copyright Laws
Full text of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C.) is available at the U.S.
Copyright Office at http:// lcweb.loc.gov/copyright. The Copyright Office also
provides texts of the Berne Convention and the UCC.
Full text of the Berne Convention is available at
http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/ overview.html.
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

Conference Resources
Report of WIPO Conference in Geneva, Dec. 2_20, 1996, by International

Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) at
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/V/press/pr970122.htm.
List and texts of preparatory documents by WIPO at
http://www.wipo.org/eng/diplconf/index.htm.

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CHAPTER 6
Signaling Quality and Product

Information
The importance of advertising in the marketplace is evidenced by a large body
of economic and business literature on that topic, and, accordingly, advertising
models for the electronic marketplace have become a hot topic. Currently,
however, Internet advertising and marketing literature focuses on adapting the
conventional advertising framework to the peculiarities of the Internet. In other
words, the Internet is seen as an alternative channel for advertising (in addition
to traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, and television).
This chapter analyzes advertising and marketing activities in the broader
economic context of an electronic marketplace, not just as a new channel.
Selling a product is one of fundamental processes of interaction between
market players. This chapter, therefore, reevaluates the nature of advertising
and other types of signaling devices adopted by digital product sellers to
convey product information and prices to consumers. Particular attention is
paid to the problem of quality uncertainty, which can result in the "lemons"
problem discussed in Chapter 4. The primary economic concern in this chapter
is the effectiveness of various seller-initiated signaling devices in electronic
commerce in which products are highly customized and consumers are
searching for products based on their needs. Product information is provided
by e-mailing, electronic billboards and banners, and product information pages
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on the web. Although the possibility of targeted advertising has excited many
Internet advertisers, a viable strategy depends on how a product's
characteristics match those of consumers, which in turn requires more detailed
information about consumer tastes, technologies to process that information,
and an effective means to convey it. Targeting, however, is only a procedural
problem; other peculiarities arise in electronic commerce, such as the
following:
● Digital products are often difficult to describe without allowing
consumers to try them out.
● Product information about an information product must be detailed
enough to convince buyers about the quality but should not reveal the
information being offered for sale.
● Web storefronts can be used as a marketing platform but must combine
other functions related to production, sales, and customer service.
This chapter's objective is to highlight these aspects of signaling in electronic
commerce. Section 6.1 discusses the trends and practices of electronic
advertising on the Internet and the increasing use of web storefronts as an
informational channel. Section 6.2 reviews economic roles and effects of
advertising and other signaling devices, and investigates how they may
enhance or lower market efficiency. Section 6.3 analyzes alternative signaling
mechanisms such as reputation and quality guarantee. Finally, section 6.4
evaluates some of the marketing strategies being promoted for the Internet.
The critical element in the new strategies is the participation by the buyers in
developing advertising content through interactions. The importance of
buyer-initiated activities will be carried over to Chapter 7, which focuses on
the consumer's initiative to search for product information.
6.1. Advertising on the Internet

Because Internet advertising is a rather recent phenomenon, experts have
emphasized the cultural aspects of Internet users that differ from those with
Page 215
whom the broadcasting and mass media world is familiar. Thus, one often
hears that advertisers should rely on a "pull model" of advertising in which
buyers have more say, rather than a "push model" in which sellers decide the
content of advertising and select their audience. The Internet uses both push
and pull models; web stores are fashioned after a pull model, whereas more
refined push models take the form of targeted advertising. The following
sections use specific examples to review the general trends.
Growth in Electronic Advertising
The general view of advertising and electronic commerce sees the Internet as
an alternative advertising medium with consumers' awareness of the medium
growing rapidly. According to a recent survey by Advertising Age
(http://www.adage.com), 82 percent of consumers surveyed in 1996 are aware
of the World Wide Web, almost doubling from 45 percent in 1995. Of these,
94 percent know about the Internet, compared to 82 percent in 1995.
The advertising market as a whole is a big business. The total advertising
expenditure in the U.S. in 1995, for example, exceeded $100 billion (see table
6.1). Although figures for individual companies are not available, many spend
a large sum of money. Proctor & Gamble, for example, spent $1.4 billion in
1986. Although firms are spending more of their dollars on the Internet, it still
accounts for a tiny share of the overall advertising market. In 1995, advertising
revenues on the Internet were estimated to be about $43 million (Business
Week, September 23, 1996). Estimates for 1996 vary from $140 to $350
million dollars, hedging toward higher figures if advertising values of barters,
reciprocal ads, and others are included. Even the largest estimate, however, is
still less than 1 percent of the total advertising revenues in the U.S. In
comparison, non-U.S. online advertising revenues in 1996 were estimated at
$6.1 million, according to Jupiter Communications (http://www.jup.com), with
Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany each with over $1 million. The
biggest web advertising outlet in the U.S., Netscape Communications
(http://www.netscape.com), had a second quarter revenue of $7.75 million in
1996.
Page 216
Table 6.1 Advertising Expenditures in 1995
Industry Segment Expenditure in Billions of Dollars
Television 30.6
Cable and satellite TV 5.3
Radio 11.3
Newspaper 36.0
Magazine 14.6
Others 5.2
——————————— ——
Total 103.0
Source: Veronis, Suhler and Associates

(http://www.vsacomm.com/pr/prcif96.htm).
From 1995 to 1996, Internet advertising revenues have grown from under $50
million to about $200 million. Whether or not this trend will continue depends
on the effectiveness of Internet advertising. Because it is recognized as an
effective alternative to traditional media, the Internet's share in the total
advertising expenditure may grow. Frost & Sullivan (http://www.frost.com), a
market consulting firm, predicts that the share will be over 20 percent of the
total (about $5.5 billion) within five years. Advertising on the Internet,
however, is still in its infancy and its characteristics will change dramatically,
making projections based on current behaviors highly unreliable. Revenues
spent on the Internet may grow, but the real issue is how and where they are
spent.
Table 6.1 shows how dependent the newspaper industry is on advertising
revenues. A third of its advertising income is from classified advertising.
Numerous "for sale" newsgroups are replacing traditional classified
newspaper, magazine, and penny shoppers. With the possibility of losing
revenues, newspapers confront the growing Internet advertising in two ways.
First, newspapers establish an online channel for their service. Several leading
daily newspapers operate an online classified advertising service. Career Path
(http://www.careerpath.com), for example, lists "help wanted" advertising that
allows consumers to search and categorize. Second, online newspapers
themselves have become a substantial source of advertising income. According
to the

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Newspaper Association of America (http://www.naa.org), a trade association
for newspaper publishers, a third of online newspapers made money in 1996.
A similar trend is forecast for online versions of traditional media newspapers
within four years. Over half of newspapers now have staff dedicated to online
production and sales.
Advertising revenue figures are based on the conventional definition of
advertising: the payment of sponsors whose ads are displayed to web browsers.
Web pages are sprinkled with more and more tiny electronic billboards to grab
the viewer's attention—just as printed advertisements and commercials work
for newspapers and television. Although this type of "conventional"
advertising is gaining a more ready audience in the World Wide Web universe,
the Internet also offers other advertising mechanisms, including topical and for
sale newsgroups, mailing lists, web links, and e-mails. Web storefronts also
serve the same function as advertising. The expenses spent on these are not
included in most ad revenue estimates, which might be even higher than the
$200 to $300 million estimated for 1996. The other channels of online
advertising include postings on related newsgroups and mailing lists, junk
e-mails, and selling advertisements directly to consumers.
Types of Internet Advertising
A fundamental consideration in Internet advertising is finding ways to

distribute information to consumers or inducing consumers to visit web sites.
When firms solicit customers, however, such activities are regulated under
various statues governing disclosure, liabilities, and truth in advertising.
Therefore, what constitutes advertising on the Internet is an important issue to
be settled in the near future.
The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection, for
example, recently forced Apple Computers, Inc. to offer $599 bargain
upgrades to its customers who purchased entry-level Performa models; Apple's
advertisements had given a false impression that the upgrade would be
inexpensive and timely. The upgrade was so expensive that it equaled prices of
a new computer. To protect consumers from such instances, the FTC monitors
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and evaluates advertising activities. Does product endorsement on newsgroups
constitute advertising? Should the FTC scrutinize all types of newsgroup
postings, web links, e-mails, and so on? The Federal Drug Administration has
strict rules on how drugs are marketed. Should product information pages on a
pharmaceutical firm's web page be treated as advertising? Can one of its
employees mention its products on a chat line or post information on a mailing
list?
The dilemma shows how diverse advertising channels are in the electronic
marketplace. The conventional definition of advertising does not include the
more subtle ways of soliciting business on the Internet, such as:
● Endorsing and reviewing products on newsgroups by firms and
customers
● Soliciting listings from search services
● Soliciting and exchanging web links
● Providing product-oriented mailing lists and e-mail updates
● Web storefronts, which can be no more than a standing advertisement

for a firm
Currently, the main channels of online advertising consist of banners on the
World Wide Web and e-mailings. A more significant development in online
advertising is selling advertisements to consumers directly and indirectly. The
following sections review some of the issues regarding these main channels.
Banner Ads
There are two pressing issues regarding banner ads on the Internet. First,
several studies are under way to clarify how effective banner ads are as a
marketing mechanism. Banners are bandwidth hogs that delay downloading
and frustrate web users. Some advertisers are reluctant to pay fees based on the
number of consumers who see the ads (impressions), but insist on measuring
"click-throughs" (that is, consumers must actually click the banner ad and visit
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the firm's web site). On the other hand, many consumers tolerate banner ads to
avoid paying for contents; some studies argue that they are effective even
without click-throughs. Section 6.4 discusses the question of advertising
effectiveness.
The second issue relates to the lack of standards regarding size, placement, and
fees for banners. Although there is no compelling need for standardization,
some factors favor standardization. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and
the Coalition for Advertising Supported Information and Entertainment
(CASIE), a trade association for advertisers and advertising agencies, for
example, argue that standardized banners will simplify production and
placement of these ads, reducing costs and setting an industry-wide basis for
calculating ad rates. Whether rates should depend on the size, layout, or
technologies involved must be determined through dialogs among advertisers
and ad carriers. The IAB/CASIE proposal has been endorsed in 1997 by the
Newspaper Association of America (http://www.naa.org).
Because e-mailing has become the hottest use of the Internet, "junk e-mails"
have been filling e-mailboxes. Junk e-mails are compared to phone solicitation
and junk mails but with a fundamental difference: recipients of junk e-mails
usually have to pay to receive them. Although recipients can delete e-mails
they do not want, downloading e-mails requires connection and storage costs.
Furthermore, junk e-mails may "bomb" one's mailbox, effectively disabling
e-mail service. To the extent that junk e-mails hinder one's ability to use the
service, they resemble sending advertisements via fax machines. Several
states, including Nevada, California, Virginia, and Connecticut, are
considering measures to make sending junk e-mails a misdemeanor.
Considering that recipients are forced to pay for something they don't want,
legislative response has been surprisingly slow. Rather, junk e-mails are
countered by anti-junk e-mails and complaints made to account administrators.
Unlike Post Office mails, e-mail advertisers might never be able to pay the
entire cost of sending an e-mail. An alternative is to pay recipients or to
compensate them with other services. This approach seems to be gaining wide
support in the online community.
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Selling Advertising to Consumers
The conventional wisdom is that advertisements cannot be sold to consumers.

To many, advertisements and commercials are eye sores and intrusive
messages to be tolerated only for such reasons as lowered costs (of newspapers
and TV programs). A new trend in electronic commerce, however, is
converting advertisements into a commodity that can be traded at a price. The
mass media acts as a brokering mechanism between advertisers and
consumers, where the price of advertising is often difficult to measure. In
contrast, the Internet has opened up a means to sell advertisements to
consumers through either bartering or direct sales.
Indirect bartering is still a transitory way of selling advertisements. Consumers
are offered free e-mail service or Internet access in return for revealing their
preferences, which service providers use to assign and send advertisements.
Because their revenues come from advertisers, these services are basically in
the same league with search services with advertisements. There are, however,
minor differences. Although search services use technologies to learn
consumer preferences, sometimes surreptitiously, these services are based on
voluntary revelation by consumers. Secondly, consumers enter into a contract
with service providers, bartering the value of services offered with
advertisements. In the process, consumers develop a clear notion about the
value of advertisements. An added benefit for consumers is the permanency of
their e-mail addresses, which ordinarily change as one switches service
provider, school, or employer. Many e-mail services forward messages to a
user-chosen e-mail account, allow users to choose unique domain addresses,
and provide protection from junk e-mails and other services (see table 6.2). In
comparison, can anyone expect to choose an individual telephone number, to
carry the same number for life, and to be protected from pesky telemarketers?
Using the same forwarding principle, these services can also direct web users
to a permanent web URL.

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Table 6.2 Advertiser-Supported E-Mail and Internet Service Providers
Service URL Comments
NetForward www.netforward.com Ads may be removed (for a fee)
EMAILS.COM www.emails.com Allows personalized names
iName www.iname.com Allows personalized names
PostOne www.post1.com Provides an e-mail forwarding service
Bigfoot www.bigfoot.com Protects against junk e-mail; offers
non-English services
StarMail www.starmail.com Allows personalized names
Provides three months free service;
pobox pobox.com
uses aliases
RocketMail www.rocketmail.com Web-based
Friendly E-mail mypad.com Web-based
Hotmail www.hotmail.com Web-based
NetAddress www.netadress.com Ads may be removed (for a fee)
Juno www.juno.com Ads are displayed in a window
GeoCities www.geocities.com Offers free web home pages
Selling advertisements directly to consumers is only a small step from this

process. Consumers need advertisements to find the products they want. With
an interactive media such as the Internet, advertisers and consumers can
negotiate directly without the help of intermediary markets, in which unrelated
products—television programs, newspaper and magazine articles, search
services, and e-mail services—are exchanged to convert the consumer's
attention into advertising dollars. Instead, advertisers can offer consumers
payments for viewing and responding to their ads. Thus, a new trend has
emerged to convert advertising into commodities in electronic commerce.
Cybergold (http://www.cybergold.com) offers direct payments to consumers
who read advertising messages. Nissan plans to pay approximately $1 to
visitors to its web pages. "Micropayments," digital coins and coupons, will
make this process much easier in the future. Advertisers will have a better way
to evaluate the reach and effectiveness of their marketing efforts; consumers
will benefit from reduced search costs. Section 6.4 discusses in more detail the
economic implications of selling advertisements.
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Web Storefronts
Opening a web storefront establishes a company's presence on a new

communications medium. Although most advertisers spend only a small
amount of their advertising expenditure on the Internet, the costs of developing
and maintaining web storefronts or company home pages should be considered
as part of the advertising expenses.
A web store invariably includes information about products. By providing
extensive information about products, a web store may have a better chance to
succeed. GolfWeb (http://www.golfweb.com), for example, draws customers
by giving a wide array of information related to golf (see fig. 6.1). Started in
1994, GolfWeb offers 35,000 pages of information, including a database on
19,000 golf courses, instructional tips, and discussion groups. These contents
draw consumers because they appeal to the general interest rather than specific
segments of consumers who might be looking to purchase a product. In a
similar vein, a computer modem seller might provide extensive information
about communications standards, network architecture, and so forth to appeal
to a wide audience. Content-rich web pages lure visitors just as flashy
advertisements induce consumers.
Figure 6.1 The GolfWeb home page.

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By providing interaction with consumers, web pages also act as efficient sales
assistants who not only provide product information but also help consumers
to choose a product. Such a two-way interaction through sales assistance often
improves the market efficiency by providing a better match between
consumers and products (Wernerfelt, 1994). Therefore, a web storefront goes
beyond simply being an alternative advertising channel, but becomes a tool for
integrated marketing.
Offering sales assistance via web storefronts bypasses the problem of trust.
Although knowledgeable sales assistants provide invaluable services, buyers
often do not fully trust them. In physical markets, buyers are uncertain whether
sales assistants are telling them all they need to know, whether they are saying
different stories to different customers, and whether their assistance is
trustworthy. Many people suspect a sales assistant will try to sway them to buy
more expensive items than is necessary.
On the Internet, what the electronic sales assistant provides to customers is
"printed on the wall" for everyone to see. Automated sales assistants cannot lie
and thus are more credible than human assistants. To make web page assistants
more like their human counterparts, a web store can customize its information
and present it to predetermined, screened customers, increasing the possibility
of telling different stories to different customers. Nevertheless, the prevalence
of computer hackers and online pseudo-identities makes such targeted sales
pitches (or lying) more difficult than in physical markets.
6.2.The Economics of Advertising

The goal of advertising is to inform and/or influence consumer demand in a
competitive market. The manner in which advertising informs consumers
differs widely according to the type of product involved and the structure of
the product's market. In some cases, advertising is essential for a market to
function; in others, it creates unnecessary and unfounded differences in
products costing the society in general. This section summarizes the
economics of
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advertising by reviewing the roles advertising plays and evaluating its effects
in terms of market variables such as prices, competition, and consumer
welfare.
The Economic Roles of Advertising
Firms use advertising to achieve one or more of the following objectives:

● To inform consumers
● To increase demand
● To increase or decrease demand elasticity
● To discourage entry by potential competitors
● To differentiate the firm from existing competitors
In a perfectly competitive market, which assumes perfect information, there is

no need for advertising because firms need only lower prices to attract more
customers. In real markets, however, neither buyers nor sellers possess all the
pertinent facts necessary to trade products and services efficiently. The
acquisition of this knowledge is facilitated by informing consumers about the
existence of a seller and a product, its price and other terms of sale, the retail
location or ordering information, the product quality, and other physical
conditions of the good or service in question. By informing consumers who
were previously unaware of the product, those who knew of it but could not
locate a seller, or those who were only familiar with a competitor's products, a
firm can increase the demand for its product. At the same time, firms can
reduce the price elasticity of demand and produce a steeper demand curve by
convincing buyers that their products are better than competitors' or by simply
differentiating themselves and establishing their own identity and reputation.
Figure 6.2 depicts how the demand schedule for a firm selling a product can
change with advertising. The solid line, D, and its associated marginal revenue
line, MR, represent the pre-advertising level of demand. The firm's demand is
shown to be price-elastic, implying that the firm's product is differentiated or
that the firm is a local monopoly. Given a constant marginal cost (MC), the
pre-advertising price, P, is determined by the condition MC = MR.

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At that price, the number of units sold is Q. Upon advertising, the demand
schedule shifts to the right, implying that each consumer is willing to pay more
because of the better product information. Consequently, at each given price
there are more consumers who are willing to buy the product. With its new
demand and marginal revenue schedules, both the price and the quantity sold
increase to P' and Q', respectively. The firm's revenue increases because more
units are sold at a higher per-unit price. The firm's net profit from advertising
depends on the shape of the marginal cost and the cost of advertising. In the
simplified scenario shown in figure 6.2, the maximum increase in profit is the
shaded area {(P'_P)Q' + (P _ MC)(Q'_Q)}.
Figure 6.2 Advertising and demand.

The fact that advertising may change the elasticity of demand is depicted by a
rotation of the demand schedule. In figure 6.2, the new line D' has a steeper
slope than the old demand schedule D; thus the new consumer demand is less
elastic to changes in price. When elasticity is low, a firm can raise a product's
price without reduced sales. See figure 6.3 to compare changes in quantity
demanded given a change in price. Here, price is increased from P to P'. The
reduction in quantity demanded is smaller for inelastic demand (from Q to Qi)
than for elastic demand (from Q to Qe). In other words, a product with an
inelastic demand (that is, a low elasticity of demand) is more stable in
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terms of consumers substituting it with other products. If the product in
question is a competitor's, the desired strategy is to increase its demand
elasticity (a flatter demand curve) so that it is easier to encourage substitution.
To put it another way, the firm can increase its market power (monopolistic
control) or increase price and profit through advertising.
Figure 6.3 Elastic and inelastic demands.

Because advertising is not without cost, a critical decision a firm must make is
where to set a profit-maximizing level of advertising. Consider a market with
N number of consumers and multiple firms selling a similar (homogeneous)
product. Initially, none of the N consumers know about the product (existence,
price, seller's location, and so forth). The cost of advertising varies according
to the method chosen—word-of-mouth, billboards, signs posted on shop
windows, mass mailings, newspaper or television advertising. A cost curve can
be drawn for each advertising method based on the number of consumers
reached. Figure 6.4, for example, draws the total cost curves for television and
newspaper advertising. In this example, newspaper advertising costs less than
television advertising when the number of the target audience is small. It is
shown to cost about twice as much as television advertising, however, when a
large number of the audience is desired. The figure represents the common
notion that newspapers are an effective advertising channel in small local
markets, and television advertising is cost effective at the national scale.
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Figure 6.4 Advertising cost curves.

The shape of these curves is convex through the origin, implying the
following:
● No cost is associated with no advertising
● The cost of reaching more consumers increases at a growing rate
● It is impossible (that is, the cost is infinite) to reach all consumers
This type of convex cost is only theoretical; alternative assumptions are

possible. A concave cost function, for example, implies that the cost of
reaching more consumers increases but at a decreasing rate. A straight line
implies that the cost of reaching one more consumer is always the same:
$10,000 to reach 5,000 people, $20,000 to reach 10,000 people, and so on. If
two curves do not cross each other—other than at the origin—one advertising
channel would be more cost effective at all levels of audience reach than the
other.
The cost function can be represented by the following mathematical function:
A(m, n)
in which m = 1,..., m denotes a specific advertising method (or channel), and n
means the number of consumers reached. For example, m = 1 may mean
newspaper advertising; m = 2 may mean television advertising, and so forth.
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For the television advertising shown in figure 6.4, this means that A(2, 50000)
= $50,000. With N consumers in the market, the preceding three implications
can be represented mathematically as follows:
A(m, 0) = 0, An(m, n) > 0, and A(m, N) = ×
for all advertising methods m, where a subscript denotes a partial derivative.

Using these assumptions about advertising costs, economic models of
advertising examine a firm's strategies in selecting the optimal number of
consumers to be informed by each advertising method and the resulting levels
of prices.
The profit for a firm with advertising is total revenue minus total costs. First,
the firm chooses the number of products to produce, the methods of
advertising, and how much to spend for each advertising method. The cost
function for advertising indicates how much it costs to reach a certain number
of consumers. The cost function can also be represented so that it tells how
many consumers can be reached given some amount of advertising expense.
Let that function be n(A, m), which is an inverted function of A(m, n). The
function n(A, m) tells us that if one spends $50,000 for television advertising,
for example, 50,000 customers will be reached by that advertising campaign.
When a firm uses multiple methods of advertising, it can divide its sales into
separate markets based on advertising method and sum up revenues and costs
over all market segments. To simplify, let the number of consumers reached by
a method, n(A), be dependent on the advertising expenditure. Then, represent
the total revenue of the firm as R[Q, n(A)]. Costs consist of the production
cost, including materials and labor, and the advertising costs for all of the
methods chosen. The firm's profit, given the number of sales and advertising
expenditure, is as follows:
Profit = R[Q, n(A)] _ C(Q) _ mS A(m, n)
The firm's strategy is to maximize its profit, deciding the level of production
(Q) and the expenditure for each advertising method (m). The strategy can be
summarized by the following two first-order conditions:

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RQ = C'
and
Rn = A'(n) for each m
in which subscripts denote partial derivatives, C' is the marginal cost of

production, and A'(n) is the marginal cost of reaching one more consumer with
a given advertising method. The first equation simply restates the condition
that the marginal cost of production be equal to the marginal revenue. The
second equation states that the optimal level of advertising occurs when the
marginal increase in revenue due to advertising is equal to the marginal cost of
reaching that marginal consumer. Given a convex advertising cost curve, the
number of consumers informed will never be N, because the marginal revenue
associated with advertising (Rn) will not be infinite. If, however, one assumes
that the advertising costs are constant—or at least concave—the optimal
number of advertising may very well be N.
The shape of the advertising cost function, therefore, is a matter of
considerable interest in electronic commerce. If the marginal cost of
advertising, that is, A'(n), is zero on the Internet, firms should reach out for all
consumers in the marketplace. Such a market with fully informed consumers is
not feasible in physical markets due to the increasing cost of advertising at the
margin. On the other hand, Internet advertising may substantially improve the
market efficiency through lowering advertising costs. Nevertheless, not all
consumers read or view advertisements. Therefore, although the cost function
for Internet advertising might be lower than that of traditional media, it will
not be zero or flat (constant) as one attempts to reach more consumers.
Business and marketing professionals would like to learn more about the shape
of the cost function A(m, n). An efficient advertising strategy displays lower
total advertising cost at any level of n (its cost function lies below the others as
in figure 6.4). Because empirical studies are not yet available, one cannot
speculate how efficient the Internet-based advertising is compared to other
media. Nevertheless, one of the main attractions of the Internet as an
advertising channel is its relative cost compared to traditional mass media.
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Also, the pull model of advertising implies that consumers choose to visit a
firm's web site, thereby incurring some of costs traditionally paid for by sellers
(mailing costs, for example). As a result, more consumers will be informed
about products in electronic commerce than in physical markets unless having
more informed consumers negatively affects the firm's revenue.
Although the preceding discussion focuses on increasing demand, the other
two purposes of advertising—to discourage entry and to differentiate from
competitors—relate to advertising's effect on competition. Advertising raises
the entry barrier because new entrants must advertise as much as the
incumbent to inform consumers. Thus, advertising costs are considered to be
"sunk costs." When sunk costs are high, the market is said to have a high entry
barrier (Bain, 1956). At the same time, incumbent firms sell differentiated
products that may be of different quality or that may only differ in brand and
image aided by advertising. The proliferation of differentiated products is
well-documented in the case of the breakfast cereal market, in which a small
number of sellers "cover the product space," sometimes with an excessive
number of brands and advertising, not allowing a sufficient number of
competitors to enter the market (Grossman and Shapiro, 1984).
A competitive market is one with a low entry barrier and a low exit cost so that
potential competitors can enter and exit when there is an opportunity to make a
profit. Most markets, however, have a certain degree of barriers to entry. A
patent, for example, is a legal barrier to a market. Technological superiority or
a firm's lower cost structure also act as barriers to entry. In some industries,
such as the utility industry, an artificial barrier is erected in the form of a
regulated monopoly to maximize the scale of economy and reduce wasteful
duplication in production. In a similar manner, advertising raises the entry
barrier. To the extent that advertising costs less in electronic commerce, the
market will become more competitive. The form and content of advertising on
the Internet, however, differs significantly from those of the physical product
markets, which may change its character as well as its cost structure.
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The Informational Content of Advertising
The economic affects of advertising lead to a better understanding of why to

advertise but give less direction on the question of what kind of advertising to
employ. The content of advertising messages shifts dramatically depending on
whether their function is to inform consumers about price, product quality, and
product uses (as in informative advertising), or whether it is designed to shift
consumer tastes (as in persuasive advertising). Informative advertising can
include a description or a picture of the product, whereas persuasive
advertising tries to portray the act of using a product as popular and desirable
based on factors unrelated to the product itself. The distinction between
informative and persuasive advertising, however, is somewhat arbitrary,
because a persuasive advertisement about a product—"using a multimedia
computer is cool!," for example—may be informative to those searching for a
"cool" computer.
Advertising content also varies with the type of product. For goods whose
quality can be learned before consuming (search goods), advertising tends to
be informative. A picture or a description of a product tells buyers the
necessary information. Other products must be consumed before their quality
is known (experience goods), such as automobiles, household appliances, and
computer programs. Some products are simply too complicated for consumers
to understand and evaluate the quality. For these products, even detailed
product information is not enough to resolve the uncertainty about the product.
For this reason, advertising for experience goods tends to be more persuasive
than informative. Although both informative and persuasive advertising can be
provided for experience goods, it is often better to use other promotional
methods than advertising, such as free trials, warranties, and so forth.
Information about Information Products
If the purpose of advertising is to reveal the quality of a product, digital

products have a unique problem in that the product information must not
reveal the product itself. Compare the ways to describe an automobile and an

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information product. To say that an automobile has 300 horsepower, 8
cylinders, and a sun roof does not interfere with selling or consuming the
product, because the product information is not the physical automobile itself.
On the other hand, describing a news story or a book often reveals the product
itself. A good summary of an article may be sufficient for many consumers
who will forgo buying and reading the actual article. This section describes the
nature of this problem with an example, and discusses a possible application of
a cryptographic algorithm—known as zero-knowledge proofing—to convey
product information.
Suppose that Alice has found an effective way of solving scheduling conflicts
of video conferencing in a virtual firm whose offices are located in different
time zones. As CEO of a virtual firm, Bob wants to hire Alice as a consultant
but is not sure whether such a scheduling mechanism can be found. If Alice
publishes her scheduling algorithm on her web page, Bob does not have to pay
for it once he reads the information. If Alice charges Bob to read her web
pages, Bob has to be convinced about the algorithm prior to buying it.
Therefore, Alice's problem is to convince Bob that she can actually provide
such a service without revealing her algorithm.
Such a situation is very common for all types of information products, because
it is difficult to verify the truthfulness (or the quality) of information unless the
information is revealed. As an information vendor, however, you do not want
to reveal the information prior to getting paid. Similarly, suppose that you
have found a winning strategy in picking stocks. To maximize your profit, you
want to persuade several investors that your strategy really works without
revealing what that strategy is.
Some types of signals are used in such situations where the information cannot
be revealed. Publishing the previous results of stock picking is such a signal.
The education level of prospective employees is often used as a signal for
productivity. Such signals, however, are often incomplete and are not definite
proofs of the information one wants. Similarly, if one wants to advertise the
quality of one's digital product, customers can be convinced only if the full
information is provided. Nevertheless, a certain mechanism may be found to
give a complete proof of quality without revealing the product. In the
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preceding example, if Alice can show Bob that she indeed knows how to
schedule a virtual video conference without letting Bob know of the secret
algorithm, such a procedure is called a "zero-knowledge proof" of the product.
A zero-knowledge proof is a signal that provides complete and perfect
information about the quality without revealing the information (Goldreich et
al., 1986 and Blum, 1986). Using the simple example by Quisquater and
Guillou (1990), suppose that there is a cave with a hidden path between the
points B and C (see fig. 6.5). Alice tries to convince Bob that she knows the
secret passage, which no one else knows. An interactive zero-knowledge proof
protocol proceeds as follows:
1. Bob stands outside the cave entrance where he cannot see point A so
that he does not know whether Alice goes to the right or left once she
enters the cave.
2. Alice enters the cave and goes to either point B or C.
3. Bob enters the cave and stands at point A.
4. Bob asks Alice to come out either from right (B) or left (C).
5. Alice complies, using the secret passage if she has to.
6. Alice and Bob repeat steps 1_5 several times.
Figure 6.5 A cave with a secret passage.

If Alice was lucky at first trial in choosing B or C, which Bob subsequently
calls out, Alice may be able to convince Bob about her capability to find the
secret passage without knowing the passage. This possibility decreases,
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however, as they repeat this game. After three games, the probability that
Alice is guessing or being lucky goes down to 1/8. In such a protocol, Alice
can show Bob convincingly that she does know about the secret passage, and
Bob does not learn anything about the passage.
Consequently, such proofs can be used on web pages to advertise a product
whose quality can be proven through interactive protocols. It is uncertain,
however, whether such proofing protocols can be found for all problems. To
use the previous example, Alice selling the scheduling program may generate
examples of hard-to-do scheduling and publish solutions to these problems,
but there is no way to prove that the problems are not rigged in the first place.
An alternative is to use an example given by a potential client, Bob. Instead of
using Bob's example, Alice may generate a similar but sufficiently different
problem and then show a solution; this proves the capability of her algorithm
but Bob cannot use the result. If Bob needs Alice's service repeatedly, an
alternate way to prove her ability is either to give Bob a trial period or to give
him a demo version that expires at a certain time. Still another option is for
Alice and Bob to enter into a contract that spells out the performance.
Nevertheless, the zero-knowledge protocol has many important applications in
electronic commerce where the privacy of individual identity, private
encryption keys, or the serial numbers of digital coins is to be preserved but at
the same time the information (or the quality) must be verifiable without
revealing the information.
The Effect of Advertising on Price
Although the prime focus so far has been on the effect of advertising on
demand, a practical concern is on price. Because advertising costs need to be
reflected in the final price consumers pay, it seems obvious that firms who
advertise heavily might have to raise their prices. There is also a countering
force, however, that tends to reduce prices when firms advertise.
The various effects of advertising on price can be analyzed in terms of
absolute prices and price dispersion. As benchmark cases, imagine two
markets: one is populated by perfectly informed consumers, and the other by

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consumers who have no information about products and prices. Suppose also
that product information is conveyed only by advertising.
In the market with perfectly informed consumers, there can only be one price
for an identical product. Otherwise, firms charging a higher price would lose
all customers. In the market with uninformed consumers, however, firms can
charge any price they want as long as consumers do not search for price
information. After some consumers start to visit other stores and compare
prices, the market will consist of informed and uninformed consumers. Most
real markets are this type of partially informed markets in which either
consumer search or advertising provides information about prices to some but
not all consumers. It is generally not possible or economically efficient to
inform all consumers because of the costs involved or because some
consumers will not receive information willingly or miss it by accident.
Among informed consumers, advertising may raise or lower the level of
absolute prices depending on the strategy. When advertising highlights relative
price information, prices tend to go down as low-price firms become known
and it becomes easier for consumers to compare prices. When advertising is
persuasive rather than informative, however, the goal of advertisers is to
manipulate demand for their products and to increase their market power. As a
result, persuasive advertising helps firms to raise prices. For this reason,
persuasive advertising that emphasizes brand recognition and the image of a
product is much more common than informative advertising. For some
professional groups, such as physicians and lawyers, informative advertising
with relative price information is often prohibited to maintain high prices,
although the basis for such prohibition is often to ensure quality.
The question at hand is whether persuasive information for digital products is
effective in the electronic marketplace. Considering that an author's point of
view is an important aspect in selling literary works, news, data, and other
information products, persuasive advertising may actually end up being the
mainstay in advertising digital products. Furthermore, because the information
about a product is often the product itself, persuasive advertising may be
preferred to detailed product description.
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Sellers may have to take into account, however, the fact that some consumers
will start to comparison shop despite the efforts of persuasive advertising. In a
situation in which consumers are partially informed, many prices can coexist
for a product. Those who cater to informed customers will charge a uniformly
low price. On the other hand, uninformed consumers can be charged different
prices. Consider informed consumers to be natives and uninformed consumers
to be tourists. The price for natives is lower than that for tourists because
natives are more familiar with the market. As more consumers are informed
(become natives), the two prices become closer and the degree of price
dispersion is reduced. Because advertising and searches by consumers are
costly, however, there will always be some non-advertisers charging higher
prices, which can be lowered only if all consumers become natives (informed
consumers).
Who corresponds to natives and tourists on the Internet? Natives are those who
are fully informed about sellers, products, and prices, whereas tourists are not
informed for any number of reasons. In a geographical model, tourists may be
unfamiliar with local merchants and stores. In other words, tourists must pay
higher costs to find out prices. On the Internet, the difference between natives
and tourists may lie in their ability to search and navigate the electronic
marketplace. In this respect, an easy user interface such as the web technology
has reduced the technological barrier for some to enter the marketplace and has
turned many tourists into natives. Nevertheless, as long as the technologies are
cumbersome, difficult to master, and expensive, the electronic marketplace
will not be so efficient as to avoid dispersed prices altogether. Also, dividing
consumers into separate groups by limiting their access based on their
classification naturally enables sellers to separate them into natives and
tourists. In this sense, proprietary networks favored by some sellers create
artificially separated markets with the potential to increase prices.
A corollary to advertising's effect on product prices is the efficiency effect of
advertising. By providing consumers with product information, advertising
improves market efficiency by lessening the search costs and facilitating
seller-buyer matching. When the price or product information is not provided
by
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sellers, for example, consumers have to incur the search costs by reading
newspapers or visiting stores. Thus, when firms provide advertising, the total
price paid by a buyer is lowered by the amount of the consumer search costs.
The overall efficiency of a market with advertising is higher if the firm's
advertising expense is lower than the sum of all consumers' individual search
costs, which is more than likely in most cases. Thus, when advertising is
informative, its economic effects are unambiguously beneficial. Advertising
can be wasteful, however, if it is purely of a persuasive nature, creating
non-existent differences in products. As a preemptive strategy, advertising in
its extreme may erect barriers to entry, lowering the level of competition and
raising prices.
Advertising and Product Differentiation
Informative advertising is most desirable when products are differentiated and

consumers find it difficult to select the ones that best fit their preferences.
Chapter 8 discusses product differentiation in more detail. This chapter
summarizes only the effects of advertising on product differentiation. Products
are said to be "vertically differentiated" if all consumers agree on which
product is better. If two products differ in terms of quality, for example, all
consumers will want a higher quality product if the two products are priced the
same. If two products have the same quality but differ only in color, however,
some consumers will prefer red whereas others will prefer blue even when the
prices are the same. The latter is a case of "horizontal product differentiation."
For horizontally differentiated products, informative advertising enables a
consumer to find a product that best matches his or her preference. A
consumer's preferences can be graphed as locations in a spatial market or city.
The distance between the locations of a firm and a consumer represents the
difference between a product and the consumer's preference. Therefore, an
advertisement about a product's location (that is, specification) helps the
consumer find out which product is closer to one's location (or taste).
The obvious incentives for firms to convey product information to consumers
are the increase in sales and the reduced demand elasticity due to consumers'
knowledge that competing products do not offer a better match.

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After consumers find their match, advertising builds brand loyalty and
increases the firm's market power. Also, a firm's advertising is bound to inform
some consumers that its product does not match their tastes. In a simplified
market with two firms, one firm's advertising is beneficial to its competitor— a
type of public good (Meurer and Stahl, 1994). Eaton and Grossman (1986)
have also shown that informative advertising actually reduces price
competition among firms; thus consumer welfare is lowered despite a better
preference-product matching. The loss to consumers is due to a higher price;
as a result, there is an incentive for firms to provide excessive informative
advertising (Grossman and Shapiro, 1984).
Does advertising affect product differentiation itself? In some cases,
advertising can result in spurious product differentiation by which consumers
are persuaded to think, albeit mistakenly, that there are differences in
competing products. Many over-the-counter drugs and household chemicals
have essentially the same ingredients but consumers perceive them to be
different largely because of advertising.
When products are vertically differentiated (for example, by quality), truthful
advertising may solve the lemons problem discussed in Chapter 4 by signaling
quality. If all buyers are informed about product quality, a high- quality good
should command a higher price than a low-quality good. If advertising is
truthful and credible, higher price means higher quality.
Prices, however, are an imperfect indicator of quality. If buyers are unable to
assess the quality of a product, either price or advertising can supply some
information. Will a product that is either priced high or advertised heavily
really be a high quality product? As an empirical case study, Caves and Greene
(1996) calculated the rank correlation between product quality ratings, prices,
and advertising outlays for approximately 200 products. They found a weak
correlation between prices and quality and no significant relationship between
advertising and quality. In other words, advertising is not a reliable signal for
quality. They also report that the price-quality correlation is most notable for
convenience products such as frequently purchased consumption goods. For
these products, firms have an incentive to maintain a high-quality
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corresponding to a high price in order to ensure repeat purchases. But the
overall weak relationship between advertising and quality is consistent with
the observation that advertising is mostly persuasive. For experience goods
whose quality must be learned, advertising cannot supply any information
about the product quality but must instead persuade consumers to try out a
product. For digital products, being experience goods, advertising will be more
persuasive than informative, which further diminishes the value of advertising
as a signal for quality.
6.3.Other Strategies to Convey Product

Information
Providing product information through advertising and other direct means to
verify product quality is effective for search goods. For experience goods,
however, no amount of advertising can settle the question of quality. A
conventional method to counter the quality uncertainty is to provide a
guarantee for quality or a refund. Another important mechanism is to build a
brand name and seller-specific reputation. This section reviews these "non-
advertising" means to convey product information and evaluates how the
nature of digital products affects their effectiveness in the electronic
marketplace.
Repeat Purchases and Reputation
Reputation is strategically important when a firm is a long-run player or if a

product is purchased repeatedly. A recognizable brand name is built over a
period of time if a consumer's expectation for quality is consistently fulfilled.
For products that are used only once, the reputation is built for the firm rather
than the product, so that firm-specific reputation becomes the "brand name" by
which the firm may transfer a consumer's trust from product to product. When
both products and firms are short-lived, neither the brand name nor the firm's
reputation resolves the quality uncertainty.
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Reputation Building in Electronic Commerce
Short-run players invest little in reputation. A shop selling mainly to tourists,

for example, has little incentive to maintain its reputation of selling a certain
quality consistently. Reputation pays off when consumers and firms intend to
stay in the market for the long haul. Internet commerce is relatively new and
there is no clear long-run profit incentives to induce heavy investment in
reputation. Some Internet services, however, are already recognized as
essential for the success of electronic commerce. In those areas of service, the
clear winners are the ones who have built some reputation. The success of
Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) as the leader in search services, for example,
depends largely on its reputation as a pioneer. In certification and security
services, RSA Data Security, Inc. (http://www.rsa.com) is the front-runner due
to its reputation in cryptography technologies (see fig. 6.6). Visitors at RSA
Data Security, Inc. are informed that the firm's product is the world's brand
name for cryptography, is implemented in many familiar products, and is the
de facto standard on the Internet. The firm's selling point is its reputation.
Figure 6.6 The home page of RSA Data Security, Inc.

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Although these Internet-native firms have built their reputation based on new
products, firms with an established reputation in physical markets may be able
to transfer their firm-specific reputation to the electronic marketplace.
Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) and IBM (http://www.ibm.com) try to
use their reputations and brand names in physical markets as an entry strategy
to Internet commerce. This may give them an advantage over new
Internet-native firms and, if successful, signal a possible dominance by
existing firms in the new marketplace. Such transferred reputation, however,
needs to be reinforced by continued approval by consumers in terms of
products and services in the new market. Thus, in electronic commerce, the
value of transferred reputation may be short-lived if product quality is not met
consistently.
Renting a Reputation
A firm-specific reputation is an example in which the reputation built by one

quality product is transferred to other products sold by the same seller. A seller
without a reputation can use such reputation spill-over to rent the reputation of
others. Suppose, for example, that Alice is a retailer of computer software with
a reputation for high quality. Bob enters the software market with a new
product. Having no reputation of his own, Bob must induce buyers to try his
products, perhaps with promotional low prices or by offering free demo
versions. An alternate strategy for Bob is to sell his software through Alice
(Chu and Chu, 1994). Similarly, many foreign car manufacturers sell their
automobiles under American brands. Thus, renting a reputation can be used as
an entry strategy when products are experience goods and the sellers do not
have a reputation.
In electronic commerce, renting a reputation can be used more widely because
sellers of digital products are more diverse and short-lived than in physical
markets. Suppose, for example, that you want to sell an article you have
written. As a short-term player or a micro-product seller, you have little
incentive to invest in reputation building. A viable strategy is to sell your
articles through a reputable intermediary, for example CNN (http://www.
cnn.com) or The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com). As long-run
players, these intermediaries have an incentive to maintain their reputation.

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The buyers of an article are thus ensured of its quality, knowing that the
intermediaries check the content of the article.
Shareware and Wasted Investments
The nature of digital products explains the prevalence of shareware and

freeware on the Internet. As an experience good, the quality of a digital
product such as computer software is learned from use. But consumers are
reluctant to try a product of unknown quality. Thus, the objective in
distributing shareware and freeware is to allow consumers to experience or try
out the product. A reputation is built with those consumers who are convinced
about the usefulness or the quality after the initial trial.
Shareware is not freeware because users are legally required to pay for it after
a certain trial period. Rather, what characterizes shareware is its distributional
nature in which consumers are allowed to try out the product first, and pay for
it if they find it useful. This point is emphasized by the Association of
Shareware Professionals (http://www.asp-shareware.org), which defines
shareware as:
(Shareware is) a marketing method, not a type of software. Unlike
software marketed through normal retail channels, where you are
forced to pay for the product before you've even seen it, the
shareware marketing method lets you try a program for a period
of time before you buy it. Since you've tried a shareware program,
you know whether it will meet your needs before you pay for it.
Shareware programs are just like programs you find in major
stores, catalogs, and other places where people purchase
software—except you get to use them, on your own computer,
before paying for them.
As the ASP contends, the profitability of shareware depends on consumers
recognizing its quality. Furthermore, a distribution system, like shareware,
would be beneficial to consumers, because the sellers have an incentive to
produce and maintain high quality.
How different is shareware from freeware? Shareware seldom has a
mechanism to enforce payments. A program might expire after a trial period,
but
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users can simply download another copy. Some customers might pay for
printed manuals, customer service, or technical support. Although the data on
how many shareware users actually pay the authors is insufficient, there is
scant difference between shareware and freeware in terms of both payments
and distribution. They are freely distributed products.
Providing free products, however, serves the critical function of signaling
quality. In this sense, free product distribution is similar to advertising in
which the cost is sunk but is recovered from future sales. Successful shareware
programs also earn revenue from later sales. Once popular among users, for
example, many shareware programs are licensed to larger companies who
incorporate them into computer operating systems and commercial programs.
Examples include encryption and compression software and anti-virus
programs that started as shareware but later were purchased to be included in
the Macintosh or Windows operating systems.
Free products are provided to overcome the problem of quality uncertainty
and, ultimately, to generate profits. A different motive exists for free products,
however, where the cost of freely distributing products is not recovered.
Instead, such free distribution, advertising, or other costly promotions may be
undertaken to raise the entry barrier or to discourage competition. To compete
effectively, a new entrant has to match the level of advertising spent by its
competitor. Thus, the cost of such advertising often raises the minimum capital
requirement for an entrant. This capital investment is "wasted" in the sense
that it cannot be recovered, but serves to protect the market for an incumbent
firm.
Quality Guarantees for Digital Products
An easy way to resolve the uncertainty about quality is to provide a guarantee

or a full refund for dissatisfied customers. A return policy enables consumers
to try out the product. Such a policy, however, might not be feasible for digital
products for several reasons.
First, many digital products such as information are fully consumed when the
information is viewed by consumers. After they are consumed, therefore,
returning the products has little meaning. Suppose that Alice sells a map of the
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most scenic route from Los Angeles to New York. Although Bob may search
for such a route himself, the cost of doing so justifies buying the map from
Alice, who provides a full money-back guarantee. Bob finds the map useful
and does not ask for a refund. But Charlie, a habitual returner of everything he
buys, asks for a refund even though he also finds the route exceptional. For
Charlie, the map is no longer useful or needed; that is, he doesn't intend to
travel the route again or he is sure that he remembers the route. In any case,
Alice cannot ask Charlie to forget about the route or to prove that he did not
make a copy of the map. Unlike physical products, returning a digital product
seldom prevents the consumer from using the product in the future.
Second, returning a product or refunding a purchase price may be impractical
due to transaction costs. A microproduct—a small digital product costing a
few cents or less—for example, may cost more to transport twice over the
network, or the cost for refund may exceed the price. Microproducts supported
by micropayments, therefore, may not be sold with any quality guarantee or a
refund. Rather, transactions for such products require an intermediary with
whom consumers have an account that may be settled periodically when the
amount becomes substantial.
6.4.Marketing Strategies for the Internet

As a marketing medium, the Internet presents many advantages over
traditional media. With the Internet's capability to target customers, advertising
is more efficient; with its flexibility in interacting with customers, web
storefronts combine many functions of marketing in a seamless,
organizationally superior process. Advertising and other forms of conveying
product information, however, are only part of the overall process of selling a
product in the electronic marketplace. Consumers themselves invest in
searching for products, which is discussed in the following chapter. Producers
also interact with consumers to develop and customize their products to match
consumer tastes, varying prices in the process. Therefore, product
customization and pricing

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may occur prior to marketing a product or concurrently, which is elaborated in
Chapter 8. This section, however, focuses on the narrow definition of Internet
marketing—providing product information in the hope of increasing
sales—and evaluates the various strategies currently used or advocated. We
first review popular myths and wisdom regarding Internet marketing, and
analyze in-depth several popular notions, such as targeted advertising, push
versus pull models, and active marketing. We end by summarizing some
empirical studies on the effectiveness of these methods.
Myths and Popular Wisdom about Online Advertising
Advertising, like television programming, is driven by instinct as much as by

theory. Experience, however, has evolved into a certain set of rules to which
most advertising professionals adhere. These rules are by no means hard and
fast theories. One advertising executive, for example, argues that no
advertising can turn a niche product into a mass-appeal product. To others, on
the other hand, the objective of advertising seems to be just that: to make a
product appeal to a wider market. Even allowing this difference of opinion
among advertising professionals, however, there are some commonly accepted
tenets, or commandments, of advertising in mass media, which naturally
translate into online strategies. These include the following:
● Advertisements should be visually appealing. In mass media,
advertisements are colorful, often sex-oriented, and designed to catch
the reader's attention. On the Internet, this principle translates into
lively, interactive web content that grabs the visitor's attention and
draws repeated visits.
● Advertisements must be targeted to specific consumers. Ads are
customized and speak on a personal level.
● The content should be valuable to consumers. Web pages should
provide valuable information, not useless and large files that slow
downloading time.
● Advertisements must emphasize brands and a firm's image. Ads
emphasize how a firm is different from other firms on the Internet.
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● Advertisements should be persuasive. Ads do not force consumers to
visit web pages, but through interesting and valuable content they
should persuade consumers to visit again and again.
● Advertisements must be part of an overall marketing strategy. Firms
should actively participate in all types of Internet activities, such as
newsgroups, mailing lists, and bulletin boards.
From these observations, three popular principles of Internet advertising and
marketing can be extracted:
● Internet advertising must be targeted.
● Internet advertising must be based on a pull, not push, model of

advertising.
● Internet marketing is active, not passive.
Broadcast versus Targeted Advertising
In general, sellers want to send advertisements only to potential buyers. For

products that most consumers purchase on a regular basis, such as toothpaste,
soap, and so forth, there is little concern about waste in using mass market
advertising. Although the broadcast media is well-suited for such consumption
goods, a seller of a product with limited buyer appeal needs to focus its
advertising more narrowly, using special interest magazines, for example.
Advertisers have honed a wide array of techniques to focus their advertising
most efficiently. Advertisers, for example, have refined their techniques for
focusing by using demographics data and readership profiles. Because the
Internet is capable of supporting very small special interest groups, which
cannot be efficiently supported through magazines, and so forth, the Internet
offers even more focused venues for targeted advertising. Furthermore,
advertisers can latch on to keywords supplied by consumers to present a
focused advertisement (see figs. 6.7 and 6.8). When a user searches for
something about books, an advertisement for a bookstore appears on the web
page; when the search is related to music, the search service presents an
advertisement for a music store. The more advertisers there are, the more
precise the match between the keywords and the advertisement will become.
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Figure 6.7 The search result presented by Lycos (http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu)

when the search keywords were "novel book historical FAQ." A banner ad for
an Internet bookstore appears.
Figure 6.8 The search result presented by Lycos (http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu)
when the search keywords were "Patsy Cline song." A banner ad for an
Internet music store appears.
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Targeting advertisements in this way is assumed to increase effectiveness. In
one way or another, marketing professionals are trying to learn and incorporate
consumer preferences in their product development and marketing plans. Once
marketers learn who wants what products through market surveys, focus
groups, and test marketing, they target the consumer groups who match the
demographics. On the Internet, consumers often reveal their preferences by
visiting a specific web site. Someone who visits GolfWeb (http://www.
golfweb.com) will more likely be a golfer; a visitor to an automobile review
site may be thinking about buying a car. Because of the presumed
effectiveness of targeted advertisements, web pages command a high price for
advertisements. GolfWeb, for example, earns between $30 to $40 per 1,000
impressions (that is, 1,000 times an ad is viewed). Some popular
computer-related sites command twice that much for the same number of
impressions.
The difference between audience targeting in the broadcast media and on the
Internet is clearly a matter of degree. Although the Internet allows a more
precise targeting than the broadcast media, its advantage over traditional
broadcasting media is still only incremental. Although it is often termed as
"narrow-casting," the Internet advertising being promoted today as a winning
strategy is still based on a model of broadcasting.
However well-targeted, this type of advertising is still intrusive to consumers
who prefer to be left alone. The underlying principle in this type of advertising
is one-way communication from sellers to buyers, as in physical markets. In
contrast, the Internet is a two-way communication medium where consumers
actively seek out information about products. Therefore, in the case of the
electronic marketplace, the objective of advertising should change from
sending product information to buyers to an interactive conversation between
sellers and buyers to match the consumption needs with the products. Internet
advertising is, in fact, "needs-based advertising;" consumers request an
advertisement when it is needed. Even if a reader remembers a particular ad in
a newspaper, she may have difficulty recalling or finding the ad when she
really needs it. On the Internet, when you want to buy a product, you can
search for the ads on the fly.

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Active and intrusive advertising, such as mass e-mailings, is also redundant
and wasteful; it sends out messages that are of no value to many receivers and
are therefore wasted. Although over-the-air broadcasting also generates this
waste, messages floating in the air do not have as significant an effect as those
flowing through wired communications networks. Compared to mass media
advertising, then, reducing such wastes seems to be one area in which Internet
advertising can improve market efficiency substantially. For those who are
familiar with mass-media, "pushed" messages often appear to be more
efficient than "pulled" messages.
Push versus Pull Advertising
Although some people believe that conventional advertising is not effective on

the Internet, web pages now carry an increasing amount of advertisements
through banners. E-mail solicitations continue even though they are denounced
as an unacceptable use of the medium. Banner ads and e-mail solicitations are
electronic versions of traditional advertising. Sellers "push" product
information to consumers whether or not they are interested. On the Internet,
however, such advertising is highly customized and targeted. With such
refinements, some people believe that the push model of advertising can work
on the Internet.
Software that pushes products and information to consumers uses the Internet
as a broadcast medium. Push software is gaining popularity especially in the
area of an intranet (the Internet used within a corporation) because it reduces
the amount of traffic and delivers timely and useful information. Employees at
an electric utility firm, for example, need to be informed about rapidly
changing weather. When employees search for weather information, many
problems can arise: some employees might not find the information, or others
might forget to search for it. Instead of relying on information being pulled by
employees, push software delivers the information to those who need to be
informed in a timely and efficient manner. Wayfarer Communications' Incisa
(http://www.incisa.com) is a leading intranet Webcasting software that
broadcasts information to "alert" employees. In an environment in which
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control over information is not an issue, this push model may prove important.
On the Internet, PointCast (http://www.pointcast.com) and BackWeb
Technologies (http://www.backweb.com) are the main players in delivering
products to consumers.
In a market situation, on the other hand, consumers take a more active role in
determining what information is needed and search for that information.
Unlike on corporate intranets, no one on the Internet can decide for others
what information is useful. Consumers search the Internet with a purpose. As
an advertiser, an Internet merchant must stand ready to provide visitors all the
information they need to make a purchase. Therefore, consumers are "pulled"
by the content of the web storefronts and advertisements—in short, consumers
come to the sellers. Therefore, the pull model is a desirable method of Internet
advertising.
Many factors make Internet marketers skeptical of the pull model of
advertising. Sellers are finding that the euphoria of a horde of customers
knocking on the door is never fulfilled. A critical factor is the inadequacy of
search facilities. In the fast-growing and ever-changing world of the web,
electronic catalogs and directories are far from sufficient to guide consumers
to appropriate places. Internet traffic tends to gather in a few web sites and
often redirects itself. Coupled with the lack of content and suitable payment
methods, consumers as well as sellers are not piqued at the Internet's
commercial potential. The result is that sellers use the Internet as what they
always considered it to be: an efficient and inexpensive communications
medium. Push advertising on the Internet is increasing. Like television
broadcasters, Internet search service providers rely on advertiser support. In
the process, the transmission becomes slower due to the multimedia content of
advertisements, and the search database itself is organized to promote certain
web sites based on revenues and profits.
It is important to note, however, that what is called a "push" technology is only
a hybrid of push and pull methods of delivering products online. Sending
e-mail to an unsuspecting consumer is undoubtedly pushy. Pointcast and
BackWeb, however, deliver products based on what their customers have
requested in the first place. Without continued interaction with the customers
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regarding their preferences, customer interest will wane after a while;
customers might consider what is being delivered to be worthless and
intrusive. The viability of this so-called push technology ultimately depends on
how successfully it accounts for the need and the desire to pull information
among consumers.
Advertisements as Commodities
Two trends might discourage push advertising. One trend is the effort to sell
advertisements as products. CyberGold (http://www.cybergold.com) has the
novel concept of marketing personalized advertisements to interested
consumers who voluntarily read the ads in exchange for direct payments from
the advertisers. Consumers fill out data on personal interests, and CyberGold
distributes targeted advertisements based on the personal profile. Each banner
is denoted with the amount of payment (see fig. 6.9). If interested, the reader
clicks the banner to read it and, passing some tests on its content, is paid for
the effort. Readers can sort and choose what they read, and the advertisers can
vary payments to reflect the frequency and desirability of readers. Advertisers
on mass media pay based on inadequate measures of audience. In contrast,
CyberGold's model is a sophisticated and direct means of advertisement.
Figure 6.9 CyberGold's proposed personalized advertising page.

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The second trend against the use of push advertising is the emerging payment
methods for electronic commerce. The television industry, for example, relies
on advertisers because it lacks a suitable way of charging its audience. Thus,
television networks are ultimately in the business of selling the audience, not
the programming, which is simply a means to achieve their ultimate goal.
Likewise, Internet search service providers contend that their business is
selling consumers or consumer information to advertisers, rather than the
search database they provide. To be an information seller, there must be a
suitable way to charge consumers for searches. Therefore, the use of
advertising banners by search sites is a temporary solution until there is a
suitable payment mechanism. Instead of paying for search services, some
consumers might prefer to tolerate electronic banners. Internet advertisers,
however, insist on paying based on click-throughs instead of on the number of
banners displayed. Consumers must click the ad and connect to the advertising
site before the advertiser pays the search engine provider. In that case,
CyberGold's innovative model will be more appropriate for the consumer, and
the direct payment from the advertisers may exceed the payment required to do
searches.
Among the various payment mechanisms proposed for electronic commerce,
micropayments will play an important role in implementing the preceding
scenario. Search services may operate on a subscription basis that may not
require micropayments. The subscription model, however, duplicates what is
prevalent in the physical markets such as newspapers and cable television
service. In both cases, some consumers—occasional readers or viewers—are
not served whereas others—heavy users—benefit from such subscription
schemes. Technological difficulties, in part, justify the use of subscriptions in
traditional media. In electronic commerce, microproducts and micropayments
will certainly improve the efficiency.
Passive versus Active Marketing
In physical markets, consumers often prefer passive marketing. Automobile

dealers, for example, have successively used no-hassle pricing to attract more

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customers. Similarly, the pull model of web merchandising implies passive
marketing.
This impression, however, is only superficial. Web-based marketers need to be
active, not in the sense of pushing products, but in interacting with customers.
Instead of passively displaying product and purchase information on their web
pages, marketers need to receive and process input from customers to assist in
their purchase decision and to customize products based on consumer
preferences. This interactivity does not require a real-time application. Rather,
consumer-seller interactions occur on the web because web storefronts
incorporate many functions of a physical store. Sales assistants in physical
markets, for example, help consumers pick out products; web pages must also
act as a sales assistant, guiding customers in their purchasing decision. Web
stores also perform the functions of production, delivery, and customer
service. An active web store takes advantage in organizing such diverse
functions in a dynamic process. A passive web store is static and only offers a
take-it-or-leave-it option.
Electronic Malls and Intermediaries
Developers of electronic shopping malls are preoccupied in perfecting a

visually attractive and operationally efficient—in terms of directing
traffic—user interface on the Internet. An electronic shopping mall generally
contains a list of sellers assembled in one electronic domain, either physically
or through links. The concept of a mall as a space is faithfully duplicated; the
proximity works for the tenants in generating traffic. The stores in the virtual
marketplace need not be located side by side on a list, but should be linked
with a purpose. A web store selling collectable coins, for example, might have
a reference page that discusses the history of money. Bookstores can be
logically linked on that page rather than on a separate "links" page. In other
words, web store proximity is based on the closeness in subject, material, or
consumption behaviors of the visitors.
As discussed in Chapter 4, online intermediaries are more like The New York
Times and CNN, who mediate information markets between producers
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and consumers—unlike a mall where different types of shops are located
centrally to maximize the benefits of spatial convenience. A centralized
marketplace in electronic commerce will be an intermediary, which may be
essential for the reason discussed to resolve quality uncertainty. New entrants
and small-scale producers of digital products can rent the reputation of a
marketplace or an intermediary who, because of its scale, length of operation,
and reputation, is trusted by consumers. Chapter 4 describes how
intermediaries can build and maintain customer trust.
Is Online Advertising Effective?
Despite many rosy projections regarding the size of Internet advertising,

skeptics still abound. The skepticism is sometimes based on verifiable facts,
but in most cases is a matter of opinion. A report at Web Advertising '96
(Tchong, 1996) discusses six major myths regarding web advertising:
● There is no adequate tool to measure consumer response to web
advertising.
The fact is that the World Wide Web is more sophisticated in measuring
consumer response to advertisements than traditional media. The
abundance and detail of data enables researchers to probe deep into the
reasons why consumers click through banner ads. Such a detailed study
is impossible for mass media advertisements.
● Consumers are either annoyed by banner ads or ignore them completely.
Surveys conducted by Advertising Age (http://www.adage.com) and
BYTE found that over half of consumers surveyed look at banner ads
and think banner ads are effective. Whether this translates into sales is a
different matter. It is equally difficult, however, to make a connection
between television program ratings, the effectiveness of the
commercials shown, and their impact on actual sales. Nevertheless,
measures such as hit rates are used to measure consumer response just
as the number of eyeballs is used for television advertisements and the
certified number of circulation for newspapers and magazines.
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● Nobody shops on the Internet.
Because the size and demographics of Internet users change rapidly, any
study on this subject is inescapably outdated. If Internet sales figure are
limited to actual online ordering, they will not discern how online
advertising induces consumers to purchase offline. Although the lack of
payment methods limits online purchases, digital currency,
micro-payments, and more secure online credit card payment
mechanisms will certainly have a great impact in the near future.
● Consumers do not respond after repeated exposure to banner ads.
Recent studies on click-through rates show that consumers respond
better to repeated exposure for banner ads than for print ads. (See
Donatello, 1997 for an analysis of Infoseek's study on the subject; see
Cyberatlas, 1996 for an analysis of I/PRO and DoubleClick's study.)
● Web advertising forecasts are bogus.
All forecasts are based on the growth rates of the past period. Therefore,
web advertising revenue forecasts may be biased because advertising
revenues grew phenomenally in the past two years because the industry
is still young. Two reasons may explain why web advertising revenues
will continue to grow rapidly. First, the Internet may become an
alternative channel for the direct mail business, which had an estimated
revenue of over $30 billion in 1996. Even the television-based Home
Shopping Network may conduct its business online. Second,
expenditures on web storefronts and other forms of advertising and
marketing have been ignored in calculating the size of the online
advertising market. Considering such expenditure, today's estimates
seem too small.
● Advertisers are still committed to traditional media.
The trend toward an integrated marketing effort implies that firms
realize the Internet is an alternative marketing channel that they cannot
ignore. More importantly, digital products are emerging as native
commodities of the Internet; online marketing for digital products is a
necessity. An effective advertising strategy must consider not only the
Page 256
character of the communicating medium but also the characteristics of
the products being sold and the manner in which products are sold.
Providing Consumer Information
Another economic issue in the efficiency of signaling quality and product

information is whether firms have an incentive to provide complete
information to consumers. Lewis and Sappington (1994) argue that either a
firm will supply the best possible information or none at all.
Suppose there are two types of consumers: high and low. The seller sells only
one product; the high-type consumers derive $100 worth of enjoyment from
the product, and the low-type consumers derive only $50. Consumers cannot
tell whether they will be a high type or a low type, but know the chance is
even. Without any information about the product, a consumer is willing to pay
$75 (the expected value) on average for the product. If the cost of the product
is $30, the seller's profit margin is $45 for each unit sold with no product
information. If the consumers are given product information to find out what
value they would derive from consumption, half the consumers (the low types)
will not buy the product at $75 but will pay only $50, meaning a profit margin
of $20. The high-type consumers, on the other hand, will pay $100, meaning a
profit margin of $70. If the seller can charge separate prices with no consumer
arbitrage, the seller is indifferent between providing the full product
information and no information. If, however, there is consumer arbitrage such
that only one price can be sustained, the maximum price is $50, and the seller
will not provide any information.
If the product's cost is $60, the seller can maximize profit by fully informing
buyers and selling the product for $100 only to high-type
consumers—equating to a $40 profit margin compared to $30 for no
information and selling to both types. This is an example of a high-cost,
high-value product for which product information is always provided. When
the cost of a product is low, the seller often has no incentive to provide
information unless it can discriminate buyers.

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Finally, on a technological level, the Internet poses a unique problem because,
unlike in mass media, technologies are rapidly developing to counter
electronic advertising and to give consumers control over messages. PrivNet
(http://www.privnet.com) has developed software that blocks memory-
grabbing features of a web page, such as graphics, blinking texts, and ads, and
disables web cookies, which record what a browser viewed in a web site. The
same technology that offers online advertisers a sophisticated tool also affords
consumers a means to combat intrusive messages. Filtering technologies are
necessary to solve information overload and to limit intrusive uses of the
Internet such as junk e-mails. These technologies have the potential to limit
further the effectiveness of online advertising.
6.5.Summary
When consumers have little or no information about product quality, the
market generally fails or the quality of the product deteriorates. One market
mechanism that prevents such market inefficiency is for the seller to provide
product information directly to consumers through advertising or to send
certain signals to convince consumers about the quality. This chapter reviewed
such seller-initiated information methods. An important aspect of online
advertising and marketing is that the medium facilitates integrating various
selling processes. Web storefronts, therefore, are a focal point in combining
product development, advertising, and ordering as well as customer service in
a seamless process of marketing. An equally possible alternative to seller-
provided information is for consumers to search for information, which is the
focus of the next chapter.
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Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Shapiro, C. "Consumer Information, Product Quality, and Seller Reputation."
Bell Journal of Economics 13, (1992): 20_35.
Tchong, M., 1996. "Debunking Common Web Advertising Myths." Web
Advertising '96 Report. Available at
http://www.cyberatlas.com/wa96_tchong.htm.
Wernerfelt, B. "On the Function of Sales Assistance." Marketing Science,
13(1) (1994): 68_82.
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Advertising and Competition
Good summary treatments of advertising in terms of market competition can

be found in the following:
Bain (1956) provides a classic discussion of barriers to entry.
Butters, G. "Equilibrium Distributions of Sales and Advertising Prices."
Review of Economic Studies, 44(3) (1977): 465_491.
This paper studies a case where advertisements contain price information.
Advertisements in Grossman and Shapiro (1984), on the other hand, contain
product specifications.
Comanor, W.S., and T.A. Wilson. "Advertising and Competition: A Survey."
Journal of Economic Literature, 17 (1979): 453_76.
Ekelund, R.B., and D.S. Saurman. Advertising and the Market Process. San
Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. 1988.
Schmalensee, R. The Economics of Advertising. New York: Humanities Press,
1973.
Signaling
Cho, I. K., and Kreps, D.M. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria."
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 95 (1987): 1_24.
Spence, A.M. Market Signaling: Information Transfer in Hiring and Related
Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Page 261
Internet Resources
Web Directory for Advertising
Advertising World Directory, Department of Advertising, the University of

Texas at Austin (http://www.utexas.edu/coc/adv/world/) has an extensive list
of Internet resources (see fig. 6.10).
Figure 6.10 Advertising World web page.
Popular Wisdom on Internet Marketing
"The Eleven Commandments of Internet Marketing," by the Marketing

Consortium:
http://deck.com/mrkt_consortium/commandments.html
"The Ten Commandments of Successful Business Advertising," by Temkin &
Temkin Advertising:
http://www.temkin.com/10comman.htm
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"The 10 Commandments for Successful Marketing Communications" on the
Web by Werbal Advertising Agency:
http://www.spectraweb.ch/~verbal/english/10commandments.html
Shareware Resources
The Association of Shareware Producers' FAQ is available at

http://www.asp-shareware.org/sharewar.html.
The newsgroup, alt.comp.shareware, has a FAQ available at
http://mini.net/pub/acs-faq.txt.
The following are some popular web sites that offer shareware:
● Arizona Mac Users Group: http://cdrom.amug.org
● BestZips: http://www.bestzips.com
● CNET's Shareware site: http://www.shareware.com
● Educational Software Cooperative: http://members.aol.com/edsoftcoop
● FTP search by program name: http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/ftpsearch
● Shareware Trade Association: http://www.shareware.org
● Ziff-Davis Interactive: http://www.zdnet.com/zdi/software

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CHAPTER 7
Consumers' Search for Information

Any discussion of the economic implications of the means by which sellers
provide information to consumers needs to consider the means by which
consumers search for product information in a digital world. In physical
markets, consumer search activities include reading advertisements, calling
vendors, and visiting stores. In a virtual marketplace, all these activities
converge into web searches and web browsing. Not surprisingly, search
services were the first market infrastructure to be built in the electronic
marketplace. The focus of this chapter is to investigate the nature of existing
search mechanisms as information channels. It also evaluates the effectiveness
of search services and information intermediaries in terms of the economic
efficiency that the digital information market may achieve through the
proliferation of these search channels.
7.1.Consumer Searches and Economic Efficiency

A market is considered to be economically efficient when a product is sold at
the lowest possible price or at the marginal cost of production for a given level
of quality. For a standard product that can be produced by many firms using a
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common technology, an efficient price is unique. In real markets, however, a
uniform price is seldom observed because sellers and buyers have different
information about the price and quality of a product. Bargain hunters must
visit many stores to gather information on different prices and product
specifications, and compare their records before deciding which offers the best
deal. This search process clearly has costs associated with it. To obtain full
information about prices and product qualities, consumers must incur
unnecessarily high search expenses and duplicate the efforts of other
consumers. An efficient solution strikes a balance between the benefits of an
efficient marginal price and the costs required to inform all market participants
about price and product quality.
In general, firms know more about their products than do the consumers. This
informational advantage gives firms some degree of market power, which is
usually manifested in the form of a product price greater than the competitive
price. If consumers were to receive advertising about price and product quality
from all sellers in the market, their purchase decision would be based on who
offered the lowest price or the best price for the desired quality. However,
consumers do not tend to receive all the relevant market information, because
some sellers may not advertise or some advertisements may not reach all the
intended audience. This lack of consumer knowledge creates inefficiencies in
the form of sellers charging higher prices than the marginal costs of
production, or the existence of multiple prices that discriminate against some
consumers. In an extreme case, quality uncertainty may result in the complete
failure of a market, as in the lemons market problem discussed in Chapter 4.
For all these reasons, an efficient market for product information is necessary
for the existence of an efficient product market.
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Search Costs
The cost of a search is any amount of money, time, or effort that buyers may
incur in obtaining price and quality information for products. Examples of
costly information gathering are visits to stores (which involve transportation
and time costs), telephone calls, buying newspapers, and so on. In physical
markets, searches usually happen sequentially—that is, consumers visit one
store, gather information, decide whether or not to purchase, and visit the next
store if the product is not bought (see fig. 7.1).
Suppose that Alice goes to the store #1, and finds the offer price is $10.
Suppose also that it costs $1 to visit each store, and that, for simplicity, this
cost is the same for all visits. Including the search cost, she faces the total price
of $11 at the first store she visits. She must decide whether to accept or reject
the offer. Her purchasing process may be either "take-it-or-leave-it" (accepting
the posted price), or "bargaining." If she goes to a second store, she incurs
another $1 for her search. If the second store offers the same product at $9.50,
Alice would have been better off buying it at the first store, because the total
price at the second store is $11.50 ($9.50 + $1 + $1). Suppose that $9.50 is the
competitive price and every consumer knows that fact. However, despite
consumers' knowledge, prices higher than the competitive price are still
observed in the market because of the search cost. If all sellers follow this
reasoning, there can only be one stable equilibrium price, which is at the
monopoly price. Even when the search cost is reduced to an arbitrarily small
amount, the logic of this result remains valid unless the search cost actually
becomes zero. In summary, this scenario demonstrates that prices will be
monopolistic—or arbitrarily high—even when there are many competing
sellers, as long as consumers are not informed and must incur search costs.
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Figure 7.1Sequential and simultaneous searches.

The search cost scenario changes significantly in the case of repeat purchases.
When consumers buy the same products repeatedly over a long period of time,
they become familiar with the prices charged by each seller in the market.
Except for the case in which everyone shops at the same store, some sellers
may actually lower prices to attract more customers. In a sense, buyers
accumulate price information and make their purchasing decisions based on
this simultaneously (refer to fig. 7.1). For those who have pricing information,
prices become efficient, approaching the competitive level if stores compete
fiercely in price. Consumers who prefer to shop at the same store are not
informed, and some stores continue to charge higher prices than the
competitive price, depending upon uninformed consumers. Repeat purchasers
are somewhat like "natives," who have information about prices charged by
local merchants, while those without information are "tourists." In this version
of the native-and-tourist model, a range of prices can be observed that
discriminate against uninformed consumers.
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Consumer Searches and Electronic Commerce
Similar to searches in physical markets, online searches can also be carried out
either sequentially or simultaneously. Surfing through different web stores is a
sequential search; a price search based on a price database is an example of a
simultaneous search. In either case, an online search offers a tremendous
advantage over a physical search. Besides the lowered costs for time and
transportation, a computer-based search allows consumers to remember and
compare information gathered from many stores. Furthermore, online searches
enable consumers to process a wide range of information other than price, such
as location and name of vendors, terms of sales, quality and performance
variables, brand names, sizes and other product characteristics, and so forth.
Comparing prices alone strains the capacity to process information in physical
markets, especially if shopping involves many products. Online search
technologies automate this process and allow consumers to engage in more
sophisticated and efficient searches.
The search and information transmission mechanisms used in the electronic
marketplace are too new for researchers to have determined their efficiency. In
fact, there are contradicting predictions about what will happen. One view is
that with computer technologies such as search engines and intelligent
software agents, consumers may be able to search the whole information space
at no cost. For example, suppose you want to buy a product. Using a computer
program, you initiate a search mechanism that searches all the web pages on
the Internet for a product that matches your needs. The search generates a table
of names of sellers, prices, locations, and product specifications, as well as
other relevant information such as seller reputation, past sales records, and so
forth. You then choose a seller among the candidates, and initiate a purchase
order. Although this scenario is close to one with no search costs, which
produces an efficient market, there are many reasons why the electronic
marketplace may not actually be so efficient. In the first place, sellers may not
provide relevant information. Secondly, search algorithms or techniques may
not be sufficient to gather all the relevant information. This may be because of
access difficulties (because some web sites do not allow access), or because all
searches inevitably select and process information based

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on prescribed criteria that may have non-technical problems. Lastly, economic
analyses indicate that a non-zero search cost, however small it may be, results
in noncompetitive pricing. Using electronic media may reduce search costs to
an arbitrarily small amount, but the cost is still non-zero. In mathematical
models, a reduction in search costs is quite different from an elimination of
search costs. In this regard, it may be reasonable to assume that the problems
associated with information will persist in electronic commerce as they do in
physical markets.
As section 7.4 discusses in more detail, some authors argue that increasing
advertising (such as information provided by sellers) tends to be a better means
of producing an efficient market than is efficient consumer searching. The
argument is that competition through advertising tends to lower prices,
whereas consumers do not usually search for all information because of the
search costs involved or the difficulty of processing information. The resulting
lack of full information on the part of consumers often gives some firms an
incentive to raise their prices. It is still not certain that advertising will be a
better information channel than a consumer search in electronic commerce.
Broadcast-based advertising has many obvious drawbacks, the most glaring of
which is that mass advertising is strongly resisted and discouraged on the
Internet, because Internet users must pay for connection and downloading time
to receive ads. Also, by its nature, advertising is necessarily duplicative and
wasteful (as discussed in Chapter 6), not to speak of its side effect of cluttering
precious bandwidth. At the same time, Internet consumers seem to prefer to
access product information actively. The conclusion is that searches initiated
by consumers based on their identified needs will surely be more efficient (in
terms of costs and effectiveness) in reaching the intended audience than
duplicative broadcast advertising will be.
Finally, consumers may behave differently in the electronic marketplace than
in physical markets where search costs are usually positive. This
positive—however small—search cost results in higher than competitive
prices. This phenomenon is popularly known as the "Diamond paradox"
(Diamond, 1971). Are search costs always positive? Admittedly, some
shoppers realize an enjoyment
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benefit to shopping rather than a cost. On the Internet, "surfers" often resemble
those shoppers who happily visit stores to simply look at the merchandise.
Armed with powerful archiving programs, online surfers are able to gather
information while enjoying themselves. When they process this information to
make a purchasing decision, the net cost of search may indeed be zero—or
certainly not positive—debunking the paradoxical result of monopoly price
equilibrium under positive search costs (Stahl, 1996).
Digital Products and Consumer Searches
The effectiveness of consumer searches depends not only on the consumer's

willingness to incur the cost (and time) involved, but also on the type of
product and the type of search. A simple search may consist primarily of
obtaining price quotes from sellers, assuming that the consumer already knows
about product quality. And indeed, for a product whose quality can be judged
by simple inspection of a picture, often called a search good, its price is the
most relevant unknown variable. However, when a product is an "experience
good," it is quite a different matter to assess its quality prior to actual
consumption, as discussed in Chapter 4. The best a consumer can do with an
experience good is to collect all the information about product specifications to
evaluate the product. Because most information products are experience
goods, a search involves a much more complex process of information
selection and access than merely getting price quotes. Furthermore, the
efficiency of the search depends on how much product information is provided
by sellers, and how truthful and reliable the provided information is. The
challenge here is that the product information for certain products is the
product itself, as is the case for much computer software. In that case, the
search may involve actually trying out the product in the form of demo or
shareware versions or free initial trials.
Given the importance and difficulties, it is little wonder that a large segment of
the electronic market is devoted to search activities. Search services on the
Internet are visited most frequently by web browsers, according to the 100 Hot
sites list (http://www.100hot.com) in September, 1996. In fact, almost
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half of the top 15 sites are actually search services, including the most popular,
Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com), as well as other search sites such as
WebCrawler (http://www.webcrawler.com), PathFinder
(http://www.pathfinder.com), Excite (http://www.excite.com), Magellan
(http://www.mckinley.com), AltaVista (http://www.altavista.digital.com), and
Lycos (http://www.lycos.com) (see fig. 7.2). For the purpose of analyzing this
significant sector in a broad context of the electronic market, the search market
is defined as all aspects of search activities including content provision,
location, and retrieving, all of which of course include intermediaries
providing search services.
Figure 7.2100 Hot sites.
7.2.The Search Market and Intermediaries

The Internet search market, similar to all markets, finds its roots in identifying
its customers' needs. Quite simply, to complete a search process, consumers
must know what they are looking for. After the need for information is
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identified, the search is completed by locating and selecting the source of
information, then by accessing and retrieving it. The search market is the space
in which all these processes are conducted, whereas a search service is one
intermediary that facilitates the process of selection. The efficiency of the
search market may be analyzed according to three criteria: market efficiency,
network efficiency, and information efficiency. Market efficiency is concerned
with whether useful information is present and whether adequate access to the
information is supported by the market. Network efficiency, on the other hand,
deals with the organizational aspects of various search patterns. Finally,
informational efficiency examines the quality and value of search results.
Search Market Efficiency
A search market consists of three components: content providers, selection

process, and access. Before discussing how the three components work
together, however, it is important to understand each one separately.
● Content ProvidersThe content provided by sellers largely defines the
informational space a search can occupy. Understandably, some product
information may not yet be available in digital format. Information that
does already exist includes primary sources such as company web pages
and secondary sources such as bot- generated indexes and evaluation
databases. Secondary sources often filter and reduce the amount of
information but add the expertise of the information brokers.
● SelectionThe process of electronic selection involves various forms of
information query based on keywords or subjects. Interactive queries
result in individualized sorts. A non-interactive selection process uses
classified ads, directories, or other types of information brokers, in
which entries are organized by some preselected criteria. Internet
searches on Lycos or Yahoo! use this selection process.

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----------- ● AccessThrough selection, consumers acquire lists of information sites
that fit their search criteria. But, to actually view these documents,
selected information must be downloaded or accessed by visiting the
web sites. The access occurs in two stages: the connecting and retrieving
processes.
The search market in this formulation extends beyond electronic searches to
include many forms of advertising. Advertising through mass mailing, for
example, consists of content providers and access, but the selection process is
entirely determined by the senders. In other words, it lacks the consumers'
selective initiative. Classified ads offer contents and selection, where contents
are the ads and the selection is provided by classification schemes, but
consumers must rely on different media to actually access the information, for
example, contact a store or a person offering the information. Directories may
provide contents if their classifications are useful in distinguishing entries. On
the other hand, directories like the white pages of the telephone book often
provide only selection because they do not have description and because
consumers need to place the call themselves. Internet search services such as
Yahoo! (http:// www.yahoo.com) and AltaVista
(http://www.altavista.digital.com) combine all three components, offering
contents, some selection mechanisms, and hyperlinks to access the contents;
but the search services differ in their scope of content and their selection
mechanisms.
Although Internet search services focus on selection and access processes, the
relevant contents must be exhaustive for a search to be efficient. The contents
need to include not only price and location of the sellers but also related
product information and the terms of sales. As content providers, web pages
should be configured to act as a sales person providing information such as
product specification, differences from other products, recommendations, and
so on. For example, to buy a shirt, a consumer may want to know the fabric,
type of care required, appropriate style consideration, size and fit, and so forth.
Consumers may also want to know third-party evaluations and safety records.
In short, web pages are expected to offer the knowledge and expertise that a
trained sales staff is expected to provide in a physical market.
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An ideal search market, therefore, allows consumers to take their searches
through a series of filtering processes by which they may reduce the universe
of available information to a manageable and meaningful size. An efficient
Internet search market can be depicted, as in figure 7.3, as the content space
available on the Internet containing the set of selected information, which also
contains accessed information space. In this case, even though some product
information is only available offline, the online search market is efficient
because all contents that are relevant (the area of the pentagon) exist online
(the rounded rectangle). In other words, one is a proper subset of the other in
the order of contents, selection, and access. If any or some of them are not a
proper subset, the search market is not efficient. For example, if some
contents, which are needed in the selection process, are not available online,
the search process cannot be efficient. In figure 7.4, (a) shows a case where
some information, although relevant, is not available online. As a result, only
the contents accessible online are retrieved.
Figure 7.3An efficient Internet search market.

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Even when contents are available online, the search market may fail if these
contents are not accessible due, for example, to access restriction or congestion
(see (b) and (c) in fig. 7.4). Finally, consumers may have to rely on both online
and offline information channels to complete a search (see (d) in fig. 7.4), as is
the case with today's market. The obvious implication is that the information
available in the physical market must also be available online to prevent search
problems such as (a) and (d) in figure 7.4.
Figure 7.4 Examples of an inefficient search market.

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As contents are converted into digital forms, and new types of information are
provided online, almost all contents may be available both online and offline.
As contents become larger and more complicated, the efficiency of the
selection process becomes a critical factor in consumer searches. The most
efficient selection process is achieved when all accessed information is indeed
relevant to a purchasing decision. In other words, the result of a search using
the AltaVista search engine produces only useful information rather than the
thousands of documents today's search services tend to generate. To increase
selection efficiency, Internet search engines offer different ways to conduct a
search. The simplest search consists of typing in some keywords. This process
often produces many irrelevant documents and links, but it enables searchers
full access to the complete database. On the other hand, search services need to
exercise some value judgment in compiling directories. Although directories
are familiar to consumers and easy to use, classifying an entry can be arbitrary
when a document belongs to different categories. Evaluated and recommended
lists of sites and documents (for example, "What's New" or "What's Hot" lists)
can be even more arbitrary as consumers have a minimal amount of input in
selecting them. This type of service is not really a search service but rather
more of an advertisement.
Despite their limitations, search services play an important role by aiding
consumers in the selection process. Search engines are in fact intermediaries
who broker product information between sellers and buyers. According to the
theory of disintermediation, electronic commerce represents a market where
intermediaries disappear because consumers can interact directly with
producers. In such a market, consumers do not need search intermediaries
because, for example, consumers are able to use powerful search programs of
their own. Today's search engines in fact send out intelligent programs or
automated robots to gather information about web documents. Consumers, in
theory, can employ their own agents that roam cyberspace with a
predetermined mission and report back to their owners. On the other hand,
search intermediaries may continue to serve in the electronic marketplace for
several reasons, which are discussed in the following sections.

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Search Efficiency in Intermediaries
In terms of network traffic, individual agent-based searches generate much

duplication in both accessing and downloading information, because each
consumer must send its own query over the network. This duplicative traffic
can be minimized by using intermediaries who collect, process, and store the
information.
The efficiency in intermediating potentially duplicative and wasteful efforts to
access information on the Internet resembles that of wholesaling and retailing
in physical markets. By handling products in bulk, wholesalers and retailers in
physical markets minimize transportation costs involved in distributing these
products to geographically dispersed end users. For digital products, however,
a producer needs only to send one copy to a wholesaler or a retailer, and
therefore has no reason to be concerned with minimizing distribution costs.
And because no online retailer is closer to consumers than their suppliers,
distributive efficiency is not an issue. Nevertheless, an online intermediary
minimizes distribution costs in its own way by reducing costs associated with
network traffic. As shown in figure 7.5, the similarity between intermediated
and disintermediated markets is striking.
The stylized diagram, figure 7.5, shows how consumers access product
information. In (a), each buyer sends a query to all sellers to get product
information, whereas in (b), buyers can get information from the intermediary
who receives information packages from all these sellers. In a similar delivery
scheme in physical markets, such an intermediated structure may not be
efficient if some sellers are located closer to buyers than is the intermediary. A
significant inefficiency can occur in the hub-and-spoke system used by airlines
if some passengers (buyers) are forced to go through the hub (intermediary)
regardless of the extra distance involved. In the virtual environment of the
electronic marketplace, however, an intermediated search market dramatically
reduces duplicated traffic and enhances network efficiency.
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Figure 7.5Information access with and without an intermediary.

This network efficiency has little to do with the intermediary's role in assisting
consumers' selection processes; the efficiency results simply from the
existence of a centralized outlet for all sellers. But this centralization need not
require that the same contents be stored in both the producers' and the
intermediary's web sites—a wasteful duplication. Instead, the product
information at the intermediary's web site has only the information necessary
for buyers to make purchase decisions. In a way, the intermediary also acts as
an information filtering agent, which is the second type of efficiency in
intermediation. Beyond intermediaries, consumers have many tools to filter
information.
In an extreme case, for proper selection and evaluation of a product a
consumer may require the full information contained in the seller's web site
rather than a summary provided by an intermediary. In that case, face-to-face
information exchanges can actually be more efficient than intermediation
because of the latter's unnecessary duplication. But this is more of an
exception than the rule in electronic commerce, because the quality of a digital
product is difficult to evaluate even with full information or the product itself.
More importantly, intermediaries also resolve the quality uncertainty problem,
which was discussed in Chapter 4. If buyers contact sellers directly, the
accessed
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information may not be reliable unless the content providers are known to be
trustworthy. As discussed in Chapter 4, a simple contract can make
intermediaries become trusted third parties in electronic commerce even
without verifying all products they broker.
Search Efficiency in Informational Content
The primary way to search for products and price information in physical
markets is to visit stores. In the electronic marketplace, physical limitation is
replaced with a problem: locating and processing the relevant information is
difficult not because of the lack of such information but because of the very
abundance of it.
The prevalence of electronic catalogs, directories, and search services on the
Internet signals a new age of information overload. Although the incredible
amount of information provided on the Internet helps consumers to find
products matching their preferences, managing this information becomes a
new task for consumers who want to maximize the informational benefit of
this new communication medium. In the electronic marketplace, where
geographical residence has little meaning, the "natives" in the
native-and-tourist model of price dispersion are those who can use computer
programs comfortably, who know where to find relevant information, and who
have the correct type of software agents and brokers to help them in processing
the information. Those who have the ability to navigate the sea of information
have a clear economic advantage over electronic "tourists" in finding the right
products at the right prices.
In electronic commerce, however, most consumers may enjoy the benefit of
being a native because information processing—or navigating the sea of
information—can be automated to be run by computer programs (also called
intelligent agents) or relegated to information intermediaries who sell their
expertise in organizing information. Both of these tools help consumers to
search, locate, retrieve, filter, and process information without incurring as
high a cost as they do in physical markets.
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Intelligent or software agents, or bots, are computer programs that carry out a
specific task as programmed by a user. (A more detailed discussion is included
in section 7.3). For example, they can screen incoming e-mail messages,
evaluate them, and sort them out according to prescribed priorities, often
generating automatic replies when required. Some agents can be sent over the
network to search for information and report the results back to the owner. In a
similar manner, most web page databases of Internet search services are
generated by sending intelligent agents or bots, which can be highly
individualized to match users' preferences. Using artificial intelligence, these
agents can be trained over a period of time to refine their processing power.
With future developments in intelligent agents, the gain in closer preference
matching may even be more substantial than the gains in network efficiency
that have been achieved through the use of intermediaries.
However, in a non-intermediated search market, the problem of information
uncertainty still exists. Simply put, consumers must trust what the sellers say
about their products. Often sellers may not provide enough information for
consumers to fully evaluate their products, or the information received may be
inadequate for consumers to judge whether the sellers are reputable companies
or fly-by-night operators. Without some guarantee about the information and
remedies available in the event that there is a dispute over payment, delivery,
or post-sale service, face-to-face sales must be carried out on the basis of the
seller's reputation. In light of this, an intermediary's role in a search market
extends beyond being an information depository and distribution center. An
information intermediary processes the information gathered by selecting,
classifying, and evaluating it. With an added function as an information
retailer, an information intermediary can also act as a third party that manages
quality and service disputes between the buyer and the seller. Nevertheless, the
primary advantage of using an information intermediary lies in the resulting
increases in informational efficiency, both in quality and content.
Information is considered to be efficient if it is precise and correct. Suppose
there is an uncertain state of the world, such as tomorrow's temperature in
Austin, Texas. The actual temperature can be any number. After tomorrow,

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you will know the temperature—a certainty by then. The usefulness of
information is in guiding us from the uncertain state to the certain state of the
world. In forecasting tomorrow's temperature, certain information is useful,
such as the location of the place, the season, previous temperatures, and so
forth. Some information may only help us to narrow the temperature down into
possible ranges, perhaps between 90 and 100. The more precise the
information is, the more valuable. Although a forecast of a temperature may be
correct in that it predicts the actual range, it may still be imprecise. The degree
of precision required depends on one's needs.
The primary function—and added value—of an information intermediary is in
enhancing the precision and "correctness" or accuracy of the information
collected. As such, users can access precise and correct information with
minimal effort by sending a query to a search service rather than embarking on
their own worldwide searches of the World Wide Web. But how can
intermediaries enhance the value of information? The answer lies in their
expertise: information brokers are equipped with more experience and greater
technical ability to process information. Secondly, they are better able to
evaluate the information and can offer a greater reliability to consumers as one
advantage of using their service rather than searching themselves. Initially, the
success of an intermediary depends upon the reputation and reliability of its
service, which is an added incentive for service providers to maintain better
information. Information efficiency is therefore an added value obtained by a
search market organized around intermediaries.
7.3.Search Engines on the Internet

This section and the two that follow examine various search engines on the
Internet in terms of the search market and the information efficiencies
discussed in the preceding sections. They also compare the network efficiency
of information search channels and discuss some of the implications for
market organization and advertising.
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Search or Surf?
Searching on the Internet starts with a need or a motive to find something, in

stark contradiction to the popular Internet surfing, which implies a random,
aimless hopping through hyperlinks for fun. Less than five years ago, "surfing
the net" was the main activity for many Internet users. Today, online users
begin by visiting their bookmarked sites or by searching for specific sites. The
growth in search activity on the Internet represents a new phase in the
development of the virtual space. What used to be something equivalent to
taking a stroll has become more of an organized mission focused upon
compiling a list of links, bookmarks, and recommended sites, and ultimately
an organized personal directory. Such a directory is extremely useful in
mapping out the virtual space. A directory should be complete, accurate,
meaningful and objective. Current search services are lacking in these aspects.
Inadequacies of Search Engines
A complete listing of web sites and their documents currently does not exist.
Instead, consumers need to visit different search sites or relevant web sites that
might have useful links. This lack of a complete directory is not in itself a new
problem. In physical markets, a telephone directory only lists local businesses,
and there are a number of specialized directories for different industries and
markets. However, there is no reason why all information housed in a library's
reference section cannot be combined into one database, especially on the
Internet. Combining different Internet search databases can further alleviate
the hassle of having to use several search engines and the duplicative costs of
having many users collecting the same information. To recover the cost of
compiling an Internet database, more and more search engines are preoccupied
with soliciting advertisers rather than improving data integrity and search
efficiency. Search engines may be one of a few Internet services that are truly
essential in enhancing the usability and usefulness of the Internet for
commerce. An incomplete search engine is as useful as a partial phone
directory.
Internet search databases are also inaccurate and outdated because web sites
are constantly changing. They often give consumers links that no longer exist.
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In such an environment, updating may require as much effort as compiling the
initial database. An alternative may be to accept—or require—submissions by
site owners about changes. Another inaccuracy stems from web sites
misrepresenting and pretending to be something that they are not. That
possibility compels data compilers to verify each site manually, further
increasing the costs of maintaining an accurate database. A more coordinated
system of feedback among content providers, users, and search engines are
needed.
A third inadequacy of current search engines are the irrelevancy of some sites
matching search keywords. One problem stems from the lack of sophisticated
and complex search mechanisms to weed out irrelevant information. Equally
lacking is a proper description for each web site and its materials upon which
to base a search. As a result, a simple search often produces tens of thousands
of meaningless links. Digital document metadata standards need to be
established and accepted by content providers and become part of content
creation.
Finally, search results need to be objective. Results can be skewed if the
database itself consists of information that is pre-selected based on arbitrary
criteria. Some search engines do not include personal homepages or materials
residing on university web sites. Others reject web sites that are considered
offensive, indecent, or frivolous by their own standards. Also, with the
increasing commercialization, some search engine providers may give
preference to paying advertisers. Although all these are reasonable behaviors
for private enterprises, what would be the use of a phone directory that omitted
all "Smiths" or those living in an area with a particular zip code? An Internet
search engine is no longer just a springboard for Internet surfing. Rather, as an
essential infrastructure, its database needs to be complete and accurate to foster
an efficient information exchange.
7.4.Market Efficiency in Various Information

Sources
Information takes many forms and is scattered around in various subspaces on
the Internet. The most recognizable information source by far is the World

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Wide Web, with the largest and the fastest-growing servers today.
Nevertheless, the web is only one of a large number of digital information
resources. Despite the growing trend to move files from non-web servers to
web servers, some files may be better served through traditional information
channels such as anonymous FTP. One example is the downloading of free
software, which is far easier and is customizable with an anonymous FTP
program than with the World Wide Web. In addition, one of the advantages of
the World Wide Web is its capability to handle different data servers,
including FTP, Gopher, electronic mail, and others. Precisely for this reason,
FTP and Gopher files need not be moved into the web (HTTP) server, which
will prolong the life of many non-web information servers.
Numerous introductory books have been written with step-by-step user
instructions that inventory all types of resources and services available on the
Internet (see, for example Hahn, 1996). The following review of Internet
services is not meant to provide an exhaustive description, but rather to
highlight the characteristics of the information provided and each service's
efficiency in facilitating information searches. For the purposes of this
discussion, the wide range of Internet information sources can be divided into
three broad groups:
● Services based on file transfers: World Wide Web, Gopher, FTP and
Telnet
● Services used for broadcasting and exchanging information: UseNet,
mailing lists, and electronic messaging
● Services that involve real-time interactions: talk, Internet Relay Chat,
and Multiple User Dungeons (MUDs)
Although these services are not an altogether practical way of storing and
searching information for real-time services, they are discussed here.
The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of servers interconnected throughout the
world that is capable of providing all types of data including text, graphics,
videos, and audio, through viewing programs called browsers. Anyone using a
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web browser becomes a client and can connect to any web server that provides
content. The two overwhelming advantages of the web over other information
channels are (1) its multimedia capability, and (2) its capability to interface
with web servers as well as to e-mail, gopher, UseNet, and so on. These
advantages are so overpowering that the web is well on its way to superceding
all other information access methods in the future. Other advantages of the
web include the capability to jump from place to place via hypertext links, and
an easy and familiar graphical user interface, although these features are not
necessarily the ones that are driving the popularity of the web in the long run.
In fact, navigating through too many jumps and links can often result in an
unmanageable work session.
As the web becomes the dominant means of accessing information on the
Internet, information based on non-web technologies is moving to web servers.
Previously, one needed to search different types of information space. In the
end, all information searches will be done within the web environment as FTP
and Gopher files are also cataloged and accessible through web servers.
Although it is fast becoming a necessary evil, transforming contents into
HTML files for the web is more time-consuming than for FTP or Gopher
servers, which essentially use text files without the additional command
insertions that are required for HTML files. Although programs are available
that facilitate file conversions to HTML, shifting a large number of files from
non-web servers to web servers is still a laborious process. Concurrently, as
the web space explodes, managing indexes and devising more efficient search
methods is becoming increasingly complicated, because web documents are
more diverse than those residing in non-web servers.
Web Searches
The challenge for web search servers and consumers is how to filter, organize,
and process search information, which is essentially information (indexes)
about information (web contents). The following sections first focus on
non-web information sources and provide a brief description of the search
methods
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of each. Section 7.5 focuses on the informational efficiency of web search
services in more detail.
Gopher
The gopher system is quite similar to the web in most of its methods of
accessing and distributing information. Since its development in April, 1991 at
the University of Minnesota, it has seen phenomenal growth in the number of
servers and files offered, but then a precipitous decline due to the popularity of
the web. Gopher is essentially a system of Gopher servers containing files that
can be connected and accessed by others using Gopher client programs. In its
architecture, the Gopher is not much different from the web. However, Gopher
was developed as a cheap and easy way to share information resources in a
wide area network called Gopherspace. It presents a simple text-based menu of
files and directories of other gopher servers. It can also handle non-text
formats such as graphic and sound files. To view these, Gopher uses helper
applications, just as web browsers do, to process images and sounds. In this
respect, however, the web server is more versatile and can process multimedia
files seamlessly. Also, the graphic-rich user interface of the web and the ability
of web users to publish and present their content online have made the web the
overwhelming choice for Internet information interchange.
Despite the decline of the Gopher system, however, it remains an easy-to-use,
fast source of text-based information. An immense amount of information,
saved as simple text files, is available under gopher servers. Public,
governmental, and educational institutions in particular maintain a large
database of information on their Gopher servers. Many of these files await
conversion to web resources, but many will remain as Gopher files that can be
accessed by web browsers.
Gopher Search
Gopherspace increased, and in 1992 a method of keeping track of all menus

and files on local Gopher servers was developed. The system, called Veronica,
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periodically sends requests to all gopher servers for a copy of all menus, which
itself becomes a searchable database. A Veronica query consists of keywords a
user specifies; results are presented in a menu of found items. Veronica servers
are set up by major organizations around the world as a public service.
Because of their comprehensiveness and limited number, Veronica servers are
often busy, but the search databases cover the Gopherspace more completely
than web search indexes currently can for web pages.
Anonymous FTP and Telnet
The web and Gopher are both, in essence, automated file transfer programs.
Computer networks were first built to exchange files among different
computers using a set File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to ensure interoperability.
The development of various Internet services has been the result of
technological progress in making this file transfer process easier and
broadening it to enable all types of files to be transferred and viewed. The web
is merely the latest stage of this development.
FTP, on the other hand, was the first interactive service between computers
that required users to have a user ID and password to log in. Even in this age
of web browsing, file transfers between two machines or computer accounts
are accomplished via FTP. Anonymous FTP refers to an FTP server that is
configured to accept anonymous logins so that even users who do not have an
account with the host computer can log in, view, and download files, although
uploading is often limited to authorized persons.
The importance of anonymous FTP service lies in the immense mountain of
information that resides on these servers. Archives of most information
channels are stored in anonymous FTP servers, but most importantly Internet
software, both freeware and shareware, is distributed via anonymous FTP.
Telnet is similar in appearance to an FTP program in that users establish a
connection to a host computer and log in using their user ID and password.
However, Telnet allows users far wider control over the session. Users can

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"telnet" to a computer where they have an account and work remotely doing
most operations as if they were directly logged on to the host computer.
Telnet is one piece of the enabling environment that makes the prospect of
telecommuting over the Internet possible because users can be anywhere and
still access their office computers. Similarly, you no longer need to go to a
library to use its online catalog. Customers can remotely log in to the library
Telnet system and browse and search for information, because most bulletin
board systems are running on Telnet. In situations where an information
service provider is centrally located with users scattered, as in many
government services, Telnet is an efficient and cost-effective means to provide
information. It is primarily used to access public information resources such as
library catalogs, public bulletin board systems, and information kiosks where
user inputs—such as choices of menu or form submission—are necessary. The
World Wide Web can also process user inputs through script-based programs,
but Telnet is more suitable for a remote working session.
FTP Search by Archie
Similar to Veronica servers for gopherspace, Archie servers routinely connect

to all known anonymous FTP sites and download a listing of files. When a
user makes a query using keywords, Archie searches its database and presents
relevant file names and FTP site address. Archie servers are efficiently divided
to cover certain geographical areas, which in turn share their databases with
others.
UseNet
UseNet is a system of discussion groups, called newsgroups, which distributes

messages worldwide. UseNet is essentially a global broadcast system where
users can "tune in" by connecting to a newsgroup and selectively reading
messages. All readers can also be originators of a broadcast message, creating
a type of two-way broadcast system. However, there is actually no central
UseNet site that administers message distribution. Instead, there are regional
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and local UseNet news servers that keep a copy of each message and enable
their users to download. When a user sends a message to this local server, that
server broadcasts the same message to all other servers. In effect, UseNet is an
elaborate system that connects numerous local broadcasters. Newsgroups can
be created and used locally, or they can be carried by thousands of news
servers around the world.
Because UseNet discussions are generally focused on a given topic, UseNet
messages contain a wide range of information pertinent to that topic. In this
sense, UseNet archives would resemble a depository of humanity's knowledge
and experience in any one area. At present, however, messages are not
archived because there is no single news server that controls all the messages
posted to a newsgroup. If someone archives these messages, there is a good
chance that others are doing the same duplicative archiving. More importantly,
a great portion of UseNet messages are considered to be repetitive, personal,
flaming, and sometimes irrelevant. Nevertheless, given the vast number of
participants, if you have a question, chances are good that there is someone on
a newsgroup with the answer. The type of query and information obtained is
determined by the culture of UseNet discussion. Because of the ephemeral
nature of broadcast messages, the information usually concerns very specific
and current information. But many have also used the UseNet as a publishing
forum, posting their papers, essays, lists, compiled information, and so forth.
Because all messages are purged frequently from each news server, these
resources disappear. With the exception of FAQs (Frequently Asked
Questions), which are archived (for example, at the anonymous FTP site
rtfm.mit.edu), there is no way to search through past information other than by
requesting a repost.
UseNet discussions adhere to an etiquette all their own. UseNet readers
frequently complain about messages that are too long or unrelated to the
newsgroup's topic. Advertising and spamming (sending multiple posts to often
unrelated newsgroups) are generally condemned by vigorous protest from
readers, prompting local UseNet administrators and e-mail servers to take
actions against the perpetrators. Beyond the problem it poses in terms of
information overload, the fierce reaction to superfluous messages is due both
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to the bandwidth bottleneck and the inadequate pricing method. Long and
irrelevant messages exacerbate the waiting time for downloading all the
messages in a newsgroup. As a typical Internet user pays for downloading
time, the advertising costs are borne by consumers. Even when Internet
services devise a payment scheme to distinguish between access charges and
content charges, there is no way for a reader to tell the content of a
downloaded message prior to downloading. The problems related to
information pricing are discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. But the lack of
control over messages is one of the reasons why a more controlled broadcast
environment is needed. One way of achieving this goal is to make a newsgroup
moderated by someone who approves all posted messages before forwarding
them to newsgroups. To minimize a moderator's work load, intelligence agents
may be used to screen messages, which is called bot moderation. Bot
moderation is another application for information filtering technologies and is
discussed in more detail in section 7.6. Another way to maintain control over
messages is to use mailing lists.
Mailing Lists
Mailing lists broadcast messages similar to UseNet newsgroups (in fact, many
mailing lists are available for reading under bit.listserv newsgroup hierarchy)
but they restrict posting to subscribers only. The significant difference between
mailing lists and UseNet is that the subject of discussion is even further
specialized and the messages are often archived for mailing lists. Also, unlike
UseNet, which does not have a central administrator, mailing lists are run by
managers of mail servers and by the owners of the list, who control all aspects
of information exchange and subscription. Consequently, many mailing lists
are run by commercial interests. The nature of focused and controlled
broadcasting through a mailing list has made it a favored marketing tool for
sellers, who can mass-distribute ads and other messages to subscribers (see fig.
7.6). It seems an ideal environment, where consumers voluntarily request
product information and still retain control over the channel because they can
unsubscribe at any time.

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Figure 7.6Apple Computer Software Update mailing list.

If a UseNet newsgroup is not carried by a local news server, users who have
access to that news server cannot read messages posted on that newsgroup. In
contrast, users can subscribe to any mailing list as long as they have e-mail
accounts. However, the mailing list itself may be restricted unless it is open to
subscription by all Internet users. For example, Historical Fiction Writers
Group mailing list is open to all subscriptions (see fig. 7.7), meaning anyone
can subscribe. But because it allows the owners to remove any subscriber, its
membership can be controlled. Mailing list owners can also hide their lists
from any data query, and if a list only appears on its local list server outsiders
have difficulty in discovering the list and sending unwanted messages. But
choosing this option makes it difficult to compile a complete database of
mailing lists.
Electronic Messaging
Electronic messaging—or mail—refers to e-mailing, which is by far the most

popular use of the Internet. Mailing lists are one of the uses of electronic
messaging, but it has other uses that may play an important role in the future.
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Besides the actual e-mail text message being exchanged, e-mail is frequently
used to transfer files. Although e-mail can handle only text files, non-text
formats such as graphics, audio and video files as well as binary files (for
example, Microsoft Word files) can be sent as attachments when the mail
servers at both ends support Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME).
In addition, HTML documents can be sent via e-mail (because they are
basically text files) and viewed on a simplified web browser or even an e-mail
program with helper applications.
Figure 7.7A typical setting for a mailing list (example of "Historical Fiction
Writers Group" mailing list).
As a messaging system, electronic mail lacks many of the standards for
services, such as receipt acknowledgment, registered mail, and insurance,
which are available with postal services. The lack of such services makes it a
poor medium to conduct commercial and legal transactions. However, e-mails
are delivered at all times, and users can distribute files to multiple recipients as
well as screen incoming messages. Its instant, universal, and reliable
messaging should make it a better medium to conduct business than posts or
faxes after basic standards are in place.
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E-mail Address Search
Because of e-mail's private nature, there is no archive for messages, and they
will never be fully cataloged on the Internet. However, e-mail addresses can be
searched using directories based on X.500 standards if the addresses are
known. As in most EDI standards, X.500 standards only allow limited data
fields such as names and addresses (see fig. 7.8), but these fields can be
generated efficiently. If the address is unknown, worldwide searches can be
done by logging into NetFind or Finger, which contain X.500 databases. To
search for an e-mail address, the searcher specifies a combination of domain
names and user names. For example, if someone knows only the last name of
an individual and the name of the school he attends, he can use these items as a
search string, and NetFind or Finger searches all X.500 directories in the
school's known computer domains, and produces a list of e-mail addresses that
contain the last name specified.
Figure 7.8Result of an X.500 search.
Consumer Learning and Search
Newsgroups and mailing lists become online communities where like-minded

consumers congregate and exchange information. Although messages may not
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be archived for accessing and searching, information is transmitted to group
members who may individually store that information. Because of the
homogeneity of each group, these online communities are where consumers
learn about new products and trust the information, such as reviews and
endorsements. These groups, as a result, become an important means to search
for and disseminate product information as well as to advertise. A physical
market equivalent is word-of-mouth advertising. But unlike in physical
markets, these word-of-mouth circles are real and approachable through
electronic messaging. Consequently, commercial, informational, and economic
uses of these communities seem boundless.
For example, market surveys and focus groups are often conducted on samples
that are at best incomplete. To estimate the demand for a new product, a
random sample is drawn, and even when the sample universe is carefully
chosen, the sample is far less desirable than a newsgroup composed of those
consumers who buy similar products. These online groups can also be used to
introduce new products. If there is a generally favorable review of a product, it
is more than likely that others in the same group will favor that product. By
providing advertising, sellers can also connect their marketing efforts with
consumers' search and learning activities, which are the basis of online
messaging. In this regard, a healthy growth in UseNet and mailing lists
activities can be beneficial for consumers and sellers as well as researchers
who constantly have to improve market estimation techniques against odds.
Dismissing UseNet activities as frivolous, or harming them by spamming
indiscriminate advertisements, is extremely detrimental to the future of
Real-time applications on the Internet admittedly have little do with consumer
searches for information, because contents of these services are not archived.
Rather, they signal future uses of truly interactive services via the Internet and
are growing rapidly. Talk, for example, is a real-time simple message
exchange method between two logged-on users of Unix system computers;
each conversation is presented simultaneously on a divided screen. When users
talk to an audience of multiple users, the system is called chat, as in America
Online's chat rooms, where dozens of people carry on simultaneous
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conversations. A general chat program for the Internet uses the Internet Relay
Chat (IRC) program, which connects computers temporarily to create an IRC
network. Each IRC user becomes a client connected to an IRC server, usually
provided locally, which in turn is connected to a major IRC network such as
EFNet and Undernet. Similar to UseNet, chat groups are divided into channels,
each with its own topic of conversation. Web browsers can also be used to
connect to a talk server, but due to the technical limitations of the web, sending
and receiving messages is not as smooth or as real-time. By sending audio and
video rather than texts, Internetters can use it as an alternative to telephone
service or video conferencing.
In a chat or IRC environment, each person is represented by a line of text
following a prompt that contains the person's name. As people talk, a screen
scrolls continuously with new lines, that is, pieces of conversation. But
imagine a graphical environment—for example, a room, a park, or a medieval
castle—which is presented to all participants. There may be some human
characters there as well (called avatars), which represent the participants.
When someone talks, then, the avatar speaks online, and the message is
relayed to the person to whom the avatar is speaking. Objects in this graphical
environment can be programmed to interact with avatars. For example, an
avatar can lift a lamp and break it, or can play a piano. Such a
three-dimensional environment in which users interact in real-time is called a
MUD, which stands for Multi-User Dungeon among interactive game players
or Multi-User Domain for more generic uses. MUDs and other virtual reality
worlds on the Internet offer a realistic way to represent the physical world. As
such, they may become valuable tools to present future web pages and to
interact with visitors.
7.5.Information Efficiency in Web Search Engines

Numerous web search services exist on the Internet, some with access to
information on tens of millions of web pages. According to an estimate by

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International Data Corporation (http://www.idcresearch.com), the Internet had
about 37 million users and 107 million web pages in March, 1997. This
number is growing at about 2 percent every month. As the web becomes the
dominant information channel, it is important to focus on how web search
services are organized and to evaluate their efficiency in providing relevant
information to users.
Many personal web pages can actually be considered to be the result of a
personalized search service in its simplest form. In many cases the pages
contain nothing more than links to other web pages that the page creator
collected and organized under his or her interest areas, such as "My Favorite
Internet Bookstores" or "Audrey Hepburn's Unofficial Homepage." In a
fundamental way, these links represent a process of filtering of information,
that is, choosing information based on a relevancy criterion, evaluated by the
author, and presented to the public. Web search engines go through a similar
process, although they cover a wider area of web space and may use more
sophisticated selection criteria, the main topic of this section.
Adequate search facilities are an integral prerequisite to informational use of
the web. Surprisingly, however, the initial popularity of the web was due to its
recreational, not informational, use. The distinctive feature of the web is the
capability it gives users to jump from one place to another by clicking on
hypertext links. In fact, the web authoring language is named HyperText
Markup Language (HTML) and the addresses of web pages are designated by
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), all of which emphasize the hypertext
links and jumps. Therefore, it is not strange that the web users were said to be
"surfing the net," which signifies a random clicking and jumping between
places and an assumption that users were not searching for specific
information but spending time reading whatever web pages they happened to
encounter. Even today, some search engines offer visitors an option to surf
through randomly chosen web sites.
Surfing the net in this way is still the only way some web pages can be found,
because not all pages are indexed or cataloged. Users of search engines are
essentially limited to the web space that their search intermediaries have
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mapped out. Although this may be a limitation, relying on search engines are
still the easiest way to find specific information. Because the search space is
limited by the will of the service providers, gains in efficiency must be
weighed against the losses involved in foregoing some information not
included in the search database. The extent of the loss or gain depends on how
the search intermediaries filter information when preparing their databases.
Information filtering is done by search intermediaries in two stages: (1)
selection and (2) presentation. In each stage, some arbitrary value judgment is
imposed that may or may not affect the information efficiency for the
consumers. In terms of selection, search services quote how many unique web
addresses (URLs) their databases cover. The numbers range from tens of
millions to several hundred thousands. Some URLs are not visited, and
bot-resistant sites may be omitted. Some URLs are not added if they are
deemed to be of minor interest. The criteria used are, for example,
informational content, graphical presentation, and other interesting features.
Knowing how each search database is compiled helps users select a search
provider. For example, some search databases give high marks for jazzy
graphical contents and technological sophistication. For content-oriented users,
these sites, albeit valued highly by database compilers, may appear as a poor
source for information. Selection criteria are often discussed in the "About and
FAQ pages" of search engines.
After databases of this information are made, search intermediaries can use
different methods of accessing them for consumers. In one polar case, the
database may be presented as is so that when consumers search by keywords,
the results are displayed based on some relevancy criteria only. Relevancy
criteria are such measures as how many words in the document match the
search words, or whether the search word appears in the title or the URL,
which results in a higher relevancy score. Keyword strings can be enclosed in
quotes, as in "historical fiction," which narrows the search to select only those
documents that contain the phrase. Even with this and other improvements in
querying, the result of a search is often overwhelming. For example, 6,000
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documents are shown as a result of AltaVista search
(http://www.altavista.digital.com) using "historical fiction" and FAQ as
keywords (see fig. 7.9), but presented in the order of how many words are
matched. In this case, the information filtering by the intermediary (who
simply presents all matching entries) is minimal. On the other end of the
extreme, intermediaries may present sites evaluated and recommended by their
staff, such as the "What's New" and "What's Hot" lists.
Figure 7.9AltaVista search result using "historical fiction" and FAQ as
keywords.
Rather than using relevancy tests such as keyword matching, some
intermediaries organize their databases by categories; Yahoo!'s subject listings
are a good example. Keyword searches may end up presenting irrelevant
information that uses the search word in a totally different context; subject
listings or directories, however, present more reliable information on a given
subject. It is sometimes difficult to characterize a web page by one subject,
though, and intermediaries must exercise certain value judgments in deciding
under what subject a web page should be classified. This arbitrary decision
introduces errors as significant as those borne by keyword searches.
In another extreme case, search intermediaries present predetermined lists of
web sites to searchers. These sites have promotional materials or are paying
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advertisers. There is no way of knowing what criteria are used to select the
recommended or suggested web pages. By mixing data with plain advertising
links, the objectivity of the third-party intermediary is seriously compromised.
Information Acquisition and Efficiency
The process of information filtering has more facets than you may imagine.
Search intermediaries represent an example of information filtering occurring
in the middle of the information acquisition process. Although controlling and
filtering information at the source may be the result of censorship, firms may
also voluntarily restrict consumers' access to product information by not
providing certain information over the network. Another example of extreme
information filtering is broadcast television, where consumers have no control
over which programs are broadcast.
To increase consumer choices for information acquisition and consumption,
information filtering must occur in the later stages of the acquisition process.
Information filtering can be delayed until all information reaches the
consumers. Filtering agents, which can be programmed to sort out incoming
messages and to manage files, have become popular because of the increase in
information overload. Artificial intelligence-based summarizers can scan all
incoming information and present summaries according to a prescribed format
or filtering profile. Through the application of artificial intelligence, filtering
agents can be trained according to user tastes, reducing the margin of error.
Also, consumers can send out intelligent agents to search for information just
as search intermediaries have used their agents, such as bots, spiders, and so
forth, to compile their database. In this case, the role of search intermediary is
replaced by intelligent software agents, and information filtering is done by the
consumers themselves.
Information filtering is based on a simple procedure that places a filtering
program between a user and the content server (see fig. 7.10). The filtering
agent carries out selection processes based on user-determined filtering criteria
known as scripts or profiles, which are continuously updated via feedback. In a
collaborative filtering scheme, scripts and profiles are exchanged among

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different users. An increasingly popular use of filtering agents among parents
and educators is to block certain web sites that contain inappropriate or
indecent materials. Some examples are: Cyberpatrol
(http://www.cyberpatrol.com), Cybersitter (http://www.solidoak.com), and
NetNanny (http://www.netnanny.com). Although these examples are software
programs that can be downloaded or installed by individual users, N2H2
(http://www.n2h2.com) provides server-based solutions, where filtering is
implemented for all users connected to the server. The same filtering scheme is
used to remove only the unwanted portion of a web document. In the
WebFilter implementation developed by Axel Boldt
(http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~boldt/), the filter is a proxy server that retrieves a
document and removes prescribed features such as advertising banners or large
graphics before presenting it to a user.
Figure 7.10Various functions of a filtering agent.

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Finally, the filter can be used as an agent that selects (that is, filters)
documents from all incoming messages. This use of information filtering is
gaining popularity because of the tremendous growth in junk e-mails and
spamming on UseNet newsgroups. For example, suppose that you have
received 50 e-mail messages. Rather than opening and reading them one by
one, you can use a filtering program, which assigns a value to each message
based on your selection profile. A message from a known advertiser will get a
zero score; and a message dealing with your favorite subject gets a higher
score. The result is then displayed on your screen so that you can decide which
one to read and whether you want to respond. InfoScan
(http://www.machinasapiens.qc.ca/infoscanang.html), a filtering program,
displays the result on a radar screen (see fig. 7.11), where only five out of 50
messages are selected as relevant, the ones closest to the center of the radar
screen have the highest scores.
Figure 7.11InfoScan's radar screen presents its result of filtering 50

documents.
An interesting application of this filtering agent is gaining support to counter
spamming on the UseNet. A UseNet newsgroup can be either moderated or
unmoderated. A moderated group has one or more moderators who screen all
messages before forwarding them to the UseNet. The majority of
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newsgroups are unmoderated for several reasons: UseNet users prefer
unfettered, equal participation; unpaid moderators have to spend time and
effort to screen messages; and messages may be delayed unnecessarily.
However, due to the increasing level of abuse in many newsgroups, some type
of moderation will be needed for most newsgroups in the near future. A hybrid
solution is to use an intelligent software agent. This "bot moderation" or
"robomoderation" screens messages, rejecting those with "MAKE EASY
MONEY" or those cross-posted in many newsgroups. Also, the robomoderator
handles notification, acceptance, and forwarding automatically, reducing the
workload of human moderators. For example, Secure Team-based UseNet
Moderation Program (STUMP), a freely available program (see "Online
Resources" at the end of this chapter), can save time needed for moderation
but also allows messages to be archived as web pages.
Although user-oriented filtering agents are acquiring more diverse uses, in
terms of network efficiency, a middle ground may entail using intermediaries,
which filter information in the middle of the acquisition process. If a large
number of such intermediaries exists, consumers can also be guaranteed a
choice. One thing to note, however, is that intermediaries are increasingly
using advertising, which may unfortunately cause consumers to doubt the
objectivity of their search results. In some economic activities, independent
third-party status is clearly important, and information search is one of these
activities. An element of trust and neutrality is necessary so that filtering is not
seen to be a result of censorship or blatant advertising. Therefore, rather than
advertising, search intermediaries may benefit from the adoption of
micropay-ment methods by which consumers pay a small amount, say a
penny, for each search, and intermediaries guarantee full and unbiased access
to their databases.
An efficient search mechanism is critical in guaranteeing seller
competitiveness and consumer welfare. To make searches efficient, sellers
must be willing to offer the maximum amount of information about their
products, selection process should be based on clearly defined and objective
criteria, and consumers must be allowed full access to this information. Online
contents are growing and information filtering programs are beginning to
address the problem
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of information overload, pointing to a more efficient market for searches. But a
technical problem remains in setting a standard to describe a digital document,
which can facilitate the task of summarizing and compiling search databases.
Also, search services, being the first significant commercial projects on the
Internet, increasingly depend on advertising revenues to provide a service that
is essential for the electronic marketplace to be efficient. This section
examines these issues, and also briefly compares consumer searches with
advertising (two topics discussed in this and the last chapters) to examine
whether one or the other channel of information may be more desirable for
Cataloging millions of web documents is significantly different from
compiling a phone directory or an economic database because of the diversity
of web documents. They are in general in multimedia format. That is, a
document contains not only texts, for which summarizing consists of
abstracting a few keywords, but also graphics, sound files, and animated
images. A suitable standard to describe such complex files is a prerequisite to
building an efficient search database.
Geographic information systems managers are familiar with metadata
standards, by which all geographic data is summarized and described.
Metadata is data about data, and accompanies all distributed geographic data to
simplify importing and exporting them. Metainformation, in the same manner,
is defined as information about information. Metainformation describes an
information product, its variables, size, quality, author, and other
characteristics. Metainformation itself can be an information product. In fact,
in search markets what is exchanged is not information products but
metainformation. To illustrate the concept of metainformation, take the case of
data and metadata. Suppose you have census data for the city of Austin, Texas.
The data contains the number of households in each census tract, sorted by age
groups, income groups, home ownership status, and marital status. The data set
is a spread sheet with columns of variables and rows of census tracts. The
column headings are written as AGE01, AGE02, and so on for, say, 10 age
groups; and INC01, INC02, and so on for, say, 20 income groups, and so

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on. Census tracts are written on the rows as 1.01, 1.02, 2.01, 2.02, and so forth.
The table itself contains data, but no metadata. To help users, you can provide
an additional description of the data. For example, AGE01 means the number
of persons 1-year-old or under on September, 1989. INC01 refers to the
number of households with $5,000 or less in annual income in the year 1988.
You can also provide street names that bound each census tract to help plot the
data on a map. Other information is also necessary to be able to interpret the
data fully, such as error correction procedures, weighting methods, missing
value treatments, and information about census survey methods.
All this data does not describe the actual households that are the subject of the
census. Instead, it describes, or refers to, the collected data, and in this sense, it
is called metadata—data about data. Metadata standards are being developed
for many types of information: digital catalog standards are being prepared by
digital library associations, metadata standards are under development by the
Federal Geographic Data Committee, and most pertinent to the topic of the
Internet, private efforts are under way to establish header information for
digital files and software.
What is called metadata for databases is called metainformation for
information. Digital catalog standards attempt to establish a certain number of
variables that describe a digital file. Variables include the name of the author
and copyright holders, publication date, size of the file, type of file, system
requirement for viewing the file, and others. In a unified digital environment,
catalogs, headers, and codebooks have to be merged into one standardized
document called metainformation. Unlike library catalog cards or database
codebooks, digital headers, catalogs, and metainformation will be attached to
the document itself, and will become an integral tool in using and accessing
the document. For microproducts and microbundles, standardized
metainformation can be viewed rather than actual products, facilitating
transactions and minimizing concerns for copyright infringement.
Although search service providers and market analysts tend to focus on the
technical aspects of search engines and algorithms, or the commercial aspect
of
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a search service as an advertising conduit, in fact the greatest asset of the
Yahoo! directory is said to be its database of consumer preferences gathered
from monitoring access. The objective of managing Yahoo!'s directory
information is changing from providing a more efficient search mechanism to
maximizing advertising revenues. Advertising can be justified on search
engines in that it allows the service to be offered free to consumers, who
otherwise would need to pay a small fee.
An advertising-based search service brings to mind broadcast television. Just
as TV programming decisions are influenced by sponsors, search services may
also give preference to advertisers by presenting their URLs first. Also,
advertiser-supported TV programs target the broadest possible audience by
catering to the lowest common denominators of the viewers. Such
inefficiencies may appear in advertiser-supported search services as well. For
example, there may end up being a lack of specialized search services, or
search databases may ignore highly specialized web pages. On the other hand,
various search services may catalog mainly popular web sites so that more
people will visit them. Having a huge database of seldom-visited web sites
does not bring in as high a hit rate as does one with popular sites. Because
maintaining an up- to-date search database becomes more complex and
expensive, numerous advertiser-supported search services—competing for the
same customers—will hardly justify maintaining a complete, accurate and
ever-expanding database.
An alternative is to consolidate search services, not necessarily by supporting
only one provider but by linking databases. If advertising is to continue, there
may be a revenue sharing agreement to support linked databases. Another way
to avoid the pitfalls of broadcast business models is to implement
micropayments, perhaps in conjunction with distributing small payments or
coupons for reading advertisements online. When a commodity (such as
searches) is not arbitrarily tied with external goods (such as advertising) the
market becomes more efficient in the type of goods produced and in allocating
resources.
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Advertising versus Consumer Searching
Internet advertising is currently a curious mixture of passive and active

information queries. Although Internet broadcasting of advertising is
discouraged, electronic billboards are springing up in various places, and
search engines are actively seeking sponsors whose advertising is presented
based on consumer queries. If someone searches for a specific country music
artist, for example, an advertising banner for a country music shop is
presented. This is similar to targeted advertising in special interest magazines
and journals, in which readers that share a common preference can be
exploited by a certain type of business. Because Internet consumer profiles can
be far more detailed than subscription databases for magazines, the potential of
Internet advertising is great. Eventually, this vast pool of consumer
information will enable sellers to send highly individualized advertising. If
advertisers have precise and detailed data about consumer preferences, their
advertising messages might be as good as what consumers try to obtain
through searches. There may be no difference between advertising
(seller-initiated information transfer) and searches (buyer-initiated information
transfer) in such a market.
First, consider whether advertising and consumer searches are true
alternatives, that is, whether they have the same economic implications. When
advertising is costless, competing firms advertise for lower prices, and this
price competition (known as Bertrand competition) leads to competitive prices
as consumers are fully informed. When search cost is zero, consumers again
obtain full information by visiting all stores, and prices are competitive.
Therefore, the two channels of information seem to be equivalent in the limit
case where costs are absolutely zero. In intermediate cases, positive costs of
advertising and search lead to above-marginal-cost prices because there are
always some consumers who are not fully informed, which gives firms an
incentive to raise prices.
However, consider a more realistic case in which firms advertise and
consumers search. Suppose that either advertising cost or search cost is
lowered toward zero by some technological developments but does not reach
exactly

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zero. If the cost of advertising and consumer search are equivalent, it is
reasonable to expect the same result whether the cost reduction is in
advertising or in consumer searches. However, Robert and Stahl (1993) show
that the effect of reducing advertising cost is very much different from that of
lowering search cost. When advertising cost is lowered, firms tend to send
more advertisements and prices approach the marginal cost. On the other hand,
if the advantage is with consumers whose search costs decline, Robert and
Stahl show that firms reduce advertising drastically. Because there are
uninformed consumers as long as search costs are not exactly zero, prices tend
to rise above the marginal cost. In short, cost changes in advertising and
searches do have different market implications.
As long as there are non-zero, positive costs for advertising and search, then,
this surprising result implies that reductions in advertising costs do a better job
of bringing about lower prices than does improving search processes. This
does not mean that it is appropriate to ignore efficiency issues in the search
market; advertising alone does not bring about lower prices unless its cost
becomes zero. Rather, this result cautions against the notion that efficient
searches in electronic commerce will necessarily result in fully informed
consumers and competitive prices. A few observations are in order. Section
7.1, earlier in this chapter, discussed the possibility that search costs may
indeed be zero or even negative (for consumers who actually enjoy searching).
In that case, an efficient search market may produce competitive prices even
without advertising. Also, as in most economic models of advertising,
consumers are treated as potential customers so that any advertisement sent to
a consumer is read. In reality, unwanted advertisements cause resentment
among consumers and waste resources. In electronic commerce, however,
technological developments will reduce wasteful advertising as well as enable
more efficient searches. In fact, advertising and searches will be
indistinguishable in the electronic marketplace, as the following sections
explain.
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Marketing professionals are familiar with consumer advertising in the world of
one-way broadcasting media. However, in two-way communication, consumer
queries become far more important. Imagine that a consumer wants to buy a
product and can send a request for quotes to various sellers of that product.
This process is often used to contract out high-value projects in which the cost
to sellers of preparing and processing bid information can be justified. In
electronic commerce, consumer searches resemble this process. Rather than
sending indiscriminate advertising to all consumers, sellers can maintain their
web pages with elaborate product and price information, which is then
accessed by potential customers. Consumers may have to pay the costs of
access (for example, the costs of connection fees or search services), if not for
the product information itself. With a micropayment system, at least some
consumers will prefer this need-based search-advertising method over
broadcasting-based advertising. In the electronic marketplace, therefore,
consumer searches and advertising are part of an integrated process of price
discovery. Targeted advertising together with efficient search mechanisms will
push down prices to a competitive level for many products.
7.6.Summary
Advertising and search processes complement each other in electronic
commerce and are essential in reducing the uncertainty about product quality
and in preventing a possible market failure. Although search services on the
Internet are very popular, consumers often have to access different search
engines that cover different sources. Some search engines emphasize
evaluation and categorizing while others simply try to catalog as many web
pages as possible, but the sheer volume of Internet information often makes it
impossible to compile an adequate level of information from all resources that
exist on the Internet. Additionally, the rapid changes on the Internet often
make the information and links outdated.
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Despite these drawbacks, search engines are an essential tool in navigating the
virtual marketplace. This chapter has discussed the importance of Internet
search engines in terms of consumer search theory in economics. It is possible
in the future that consumers themselves may send out bots or other automated
intelligent agents to search the web space according to the owner's
specification. Rather than clogging the bandwidth with advertising, such bots
or agents could be charged a minute amount of money to be allowed to access
certain metainformation of a web page.
Finally, the efficiency gained from consumer searches and advertising is
necessary for two more compelling reasons in electronic commerce. First,
digital products are highly customized, and will have numerous producers. In
such a market with fragmented products and multiple vendors, all types of
information channels need to be efficient. Secondly, product differentiation
results in market segmentation, which increases sellers' market power.
Therefore, even with numerous sellers in the market, prices will tend to rise
more than in a market with homogeneous products. Efficient searches and
advertising are two elements that may counter potentially high prices in
electronic commerce. The next chapter discusses product customization and
pricing issues.
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References
Diamond, P.A., 1971. "A Model of Price Adjustment." Journal of Economic
Theory 3: 156_168.
Hahn, H., 1996. The Internet: Complete Reference. Second edition. Berkeley:
Osborne McGraw-Hill.
Robert, R. and D.O. Stahl, 1993. "Informative Price Advertising In a
Sequential Search Model." Econometrica 61 (3): 657_686.
Stahl, D.O., 1996. "Oligopolistic Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumer
Search." International Journal of Industrial Organization, 14:242_268.

Consumer Search
Stigler, J., 1961. "The Economics of Information." Journal of Political

Economy, 69: 213_225. This paper investigates the effects of costly
information acquisition by consumers, one of which is price dispersion rather
than a competitive market price under full information.For an earlier survey,
see Rothschild, M., 1973, "Models of Market Organization with Imperfect
Information: A Survey." Journal of Political Economy, 81: 1283_1308.
Diamond, P.A. (1971) demonstrates the paradoxical result that the equilibrium
price is monopolistic when consumers have strictly positive search costs. For a
more recent work of Diamond, see his A Search-Equilibrium Approach to the
Micro Foundation of Macroeconomics, 1984. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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Robert and Stahl (1993) compare economic efficiencies of advertising and
search channels.
Search and negotiation process is common in the labor market, where "visiting
the next store" has much more significant implications than in commodity
transactions. For an empirical study on job search and unemployment, see:
Kiefer, N. and G. Neumann, 1979, "An Empirical Job Search Model with a
Test of the Constant Reservation Wage Hypothesis." Journal of Political
Economy, 87: 69_82. For a survey of labor search theory, see Mortensen, D.,
1984, "Job Search and Labor Market Analysis," in Handbook of Labour
Economics, R. Layard and O. Ashenfelter, eds. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Negotiation is part of the search process. For a model that specifies the
negotiation process more explicitly, see Rubinstein, A. and A. Wolinsky,
1985, "Equilibrium In a Market with Sequential Bargaining," Econometrica,
53:1133_50.
Internet Resources
Search Engines
To browse all types of search engines, see:

Internet Directories and Searching Services at
http://www.sil.org/internet/guides.html; and
Babbage at http://www.bbcnc.org.uk/babbage/iap.html.

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Software Agents and Filtering
Software agents are an application of artificial intelligence. A great number of

materials can be found at MIT Media lab (http://www.media.edu).
For articles on intelligent agents, see a special issue of The Communications of

the ACM, July, 1994 (vol. 37, no. 7). See also special issue on new horizons of
commercial and industrial artificial intelligence, The Communications of the
ACM, November, 1995 (vol. 38, no. 11). CACM's web address is
http://www.acm.org/.
For collaborative filtering, see an archive at

http://www.sims.berleley.edu/resources/collab.
Robomoderation
For information about STUMP, see

http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/usenet/scrm/robomod/robomod.html.
STUMP is freely available at
ftp://ftp.algebra.com/users/ichudov/pub/stump/stump.tar.gz.
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CHAPTER 8
Product Choices and

Discriminatory Pricing
Historical battles show that a policy of competition based only on price is
often ineffective because profits for all competitors are sacrificed as prices are
lowered in each round of struggle for market share. This is known to
economists as a Bertrand price competition result. Well aware of this, sellers
are constantly seeking out non-price forms of competition. This chapter
focuses on one form of non-price competition—product differentiation. The
economics of product differentiation are first reviewed to help explain why
sellers differentiate products. Although product differentiation is observed in
physical markets, it will be more widely practiced in electronic commerce
because the transmutability of digital products makes them highly
customizable (see Chapter 2). Furthermore, detailed data on consumer
preferences are more abundant in computerized market environments. As a
result, consumers obtain a higher degree of satisfaction from customized
products than average-quality products, and prices can efficiently reflect costs
and consumer preferences. Efficient pricing strategies, such as multi-part
tariffs and discriminatory pricing, are improved by the combination of detailed
consumer information and customized products. The objective of this chapter
is to present an overview of product selection and pricing strategies for digital
products, emphasizing the significance of consumer information and privacy in
transactions.
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Next, this chapter investigates the sellers' product choices and the
customization of digital products. Customization is an extreme example of
product differentiation in which products are manufactured to match the
specific demand of a small group of consumers or even one individual. Using
examples currently found on the Internet, the effects of customization on
prices and consumer welfare are evaluated. For example, a high degree of
customization discourages satisfied consumers from reselling or sharing their
products. This is especially advantageous for products that can be reproduced
easily and allows sellers to set prices based on the consumers' willingness to
pay.
To effectively customize products and charge individualized prices, producers
desired detailed knowledge of consumer preferences. In section 8.3, the issue
of privacy in transaction and the use of consumer information in terms of
product differentiation and price discrimination are examined. Although the
legal aspects of privacy and anonymity have received considerable attention in
the press and among professionals in the nascent field of electronic commerce,
this chapter focuses on the economic impact of the use of personal
information. This includes not only such obvious information as names,
addresses, and phone numbers but more importantly information about
consumers' tastes. Disclosure of personal preferences provides consumers with
custom-built products, but they may have to pay higher prices for them.
Finally, various pricing methods for digital products are evaluated. When
products are differentiated, pricing strategies become extremely complex
because both product specifications and prices can vary according to
differences in consumer tastes and usage patterns. Product differentiation and
consumer information enable various sales mechanisms—subscription,
licensing, renting, leasing, and bundling—that exploit differences in consumer
preferences to control the usage of a product. While current pricing practices
are dominated by licensing (for computer software) and subscription (for
digital information products), other methods including unbundling,
customization, and need-based software distribution become possible as new
technologies such as applets and micropayments are perfected and more
widely accepted. The pricing and marketing of digital products indicates the
Page 315
competitiveness and profitability of electronic commerce. Consequently, this
has generated many preliminary works in digital product pricing. Most of
these, however, do not consider the characteristics of digital products and the
electronic marketplace. This chapter extends these works by considering the
problem of quality uncertainty and its effect on the market.
8.1. Product Differentiation and Pricing in

Economics
In a standard economics price competition model, products sold by
competitors are assumed to be the same and homogeneous so that only prices
matter to consumers. If products are differentiated, however, each seller has
some degree of market power over those consumers who prefer their product.
As a result, sellers do not necessarily lose all sales even when prices for
differentiated products differ. This section reviews the economics of product
differentiation and examines how product differentiation relates to product
selection and pricing for digital products.
What Is Product Differentiation?
Differentiated products are classified in the same product group, yet they are
not identical. The various brands of breakfast cereal are an example of product
differentiation. Microsoft Word and WordPerfect are differentiated products in
the product group of word processing programs. Notice that Word and
WordPerfect are termed "differentiated" but not "different;" WordPerfect and a
breakfast cereal are "different" products (that is they belong to different
product groups). Another term that is often used with product differentiation is
product variety, which refers to the number of products (or brands) in a
product market. Note, product differentiation relates to the degree of
dissimilarity. Thus, product differentiation may increase if two products
become more dissimilar, while product variety remains the same.
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Products are perceived to have a bundle of characteristics such as weight, size,
volume, color, and other qualitative measures such as performance and
easiness to use. Products in a group share the same characteristics, but each
has a varying degree of these characteristics. While products can be
differentiated in many ways if the characteristics dimension is complex, a
useful distinction commonly made is between horizontal and vertical product
differentiation.
Horizontal Differentiation
Products are considered to be differentiated horizontally if the difference is

based on appearance or consumer preference. If consumers have different
tastes (for example, some prefer the color blue while others prefer red) each
differentiated product has a market share even when horizontally differentiated
products are equally priced. Imagine a product space where a location
represents the product's characteristics. Such a location model was first
introduced by Hotelling (1929). In figure 8.1, notice that firm A sells a product
which is bluer than that of the firm B, whose product is more red than blue.
The price of each product is represented by the vertical line. Consumers are
distributed along the same product space according to their tastes for color.
The location of Alice along with the continuum of consumer tastes indicates
that she tends to prefer a bluer product than Bob. However, neither Alice nor
Bob gets a product that exactly matches her or his preference because the
products are some distance away from their locations. The resulting
dissatisfaction is represented by the increasing slope of the total price line,
which is added to the product price. The cost of dissatisfaction, which is
analogous to transportation costs in spatial terms, increases as the distance
from the firm (that is factory specification) increases. Given the two products,
consumers choose either firm A or firm B based on the total price, which is the
sum of the constant factory price and the increasing dissatisfaction cost.
Anyone whose taste lies to the left of the market boundary, including Alice,
buys from firm A. When firm A raises its price slightly, its market share
shrinks as the market boundary moves to the left.

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Figure 8.1 Horizontal product differentiation.
Vertical Differentiation
Products are considered to be vertically differentiated if all consumers prefer a

product among equally priced products. For example, products are
differentiated vertically if their qualities are different. Suppose that a firm sells
personal computers with two types of microprocessor—one with 100 MHz
clock speed and the other with 133 MHz—at the same price. Although other
characteristics of a microprocessor besides clock speed are also usually
considered, suppose all other variables are equal. In this case, because all
consumers would naturally choose the 133 MHz microprocessor, the products
are vertically differentiated. Of course, products may be differentiated both
horizontally and vertically. For example, consider two horizontally
differentiated banks that offer similar services. If one begins to offer remote
access or online banking services, it will become vertically differentiated from
the other firm. By offering online banking, therefore, a bank may be capable of
enhancing its advantage with horizontal differentiation—that is offering
branch offices closer to customers (Degryse, 1996).
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Vertically differentiated products are often sold at different prices, and it is of
considerable interest to economists to evaluate how price differences
correspond to quality differences. Products of higher quality typically
command higher prices than low-quality products, and, in a competitive
market, the difference in prices are comparable to the difference in variable
costs such as materials and labor inputs. Prices that reflect cost differences are
non-discriminatory. On the other hand, discriminatory prices are observed
when they include a quality premium or a quality discount. For example,
suppose a basic subscription for database access is sold at $10 a month. If an
expanded subscription is offered at $20 a month but the cost of offering such a
service is only $5 more than the basic subscription, then the expanded
subscription commands a quality premium, and the price of $20 is
discriminatory in terms of quality. A quality discount is also possible if the
expanded subscription service is priced at $12.50, where a part of the cost is
absorbed by the seller. While quantity discounts are common, quality
discounts are rarely observed. Rather, quality premium are prevalent because
those who want better quality products are usually willing to pay more for
quality. Note that a quantity discount is not necessarily a discriminatory price
if the reduced price for a bundle reflects the reduced cost of production,
packaging, and delivery.
The Incentive to Differentiate
The primary incentive for sellers to differentiate is the reduced substitutability

between products as differentiated products become imperfect substitutes for
each other. For example, consider two spreadsheet programs with a similar
appearance and performance such that the two products are perfectly
substitutable. If one of the two companies changes the look and feel of its
program, the two products are differentiated and some consumers may choose
a program because of the new difference. Therefore, the two products are no
longer perfect substitutes. With reduced substitutability between products,
retaliatory price-cutting does not result in a complete loss of one's market
share. Product differentiation thus gives a firm a certain power within its own
market. Such a market is called a monopolistically competitive market.
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Chamberlinian Monopolistic Competition
The model of a monopolistically competitive market (Chamberlin, 1933)

characterizes each firm as having a distinct product with some measure of
market power. Therefore, unlike a firm in a competitive market which must
charge the prevailing price, a monopolistically competitive firm can choose a
profit maximizing price level instead of merely accepting the market price.
Because consumers view the product of a monopolistically competitive firm
differently from its competition, the firm faces a downward-sloping (residual)
demand curve. This means that some consumers will continue to buy the
product at different prices. Nevertheless, the firm does not make a positive
profit in the long run. If so, another firm will enter the market offering a
slightly different product to exploit the profit opportunity. As long as there is
no substantial barrier to entry, this process results in zero-profit for all
monopolistically competitive firms.
Figure 8.2a shows the demand curve of a monopolistically competitive firm at
its long run equilibrium. At the equilibrium price and quantity (P, Q), the firm
makes zero profit, but it does not operate at the most efficient (lowest average
cost) level. The slope of the demand curve indicates how elastic the demand is
with respect to price changes. In figure 8.2b, given a price increase, customers
in a flatter demand curve will defect more readily than those in a steeper
demand curve. A fully competitive firm (figure 8.2c) faces a flat demand
curve; if the firm raises its price slightly, no customers will support it.
A monopolistically competitive firm makes zero profit—charging the average
cost to break even—despite its market power because if other firms are able to
freely enter the market, there will no longer remain any profit opportunity.
With free entry, all firms operate at an inefficient level of production (to the
left of the lowest average cost as seen in figure 8.2). For this reason, a single,
undifferentiated firm may be able to operate more efficiently in terms of scale
economy and if the benefit to consumers from product variety is ignored.
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Figure 8.2 Demand curves for monopolistic and competitive firms.
Price Discrimination
The monopolistic competition model was originally developed for

single-product firms, however, a firm may decide to differentiate its own
product. A reason for this is the desire to cover the market by introducing
different brands. For example, a firm may introduce different cereal brands or
soft drinks with different flavor or caloric content. Still, the firm's incentive to
differentiate is the same—to reduce substitutability between its products and
their markets. Under product differentiation, discriminatory prices are possible
because the firm can sell differentiated products at different net prices.
Discriminatory prices do not reflect the difference in production or transaction
costs. This means that different consumers are charged different prices for the
same product. An efficient and competitive market supports one uniform price
for all consumers regardless of their private valuations for the product.
However, discriminatory prices are introduced to take advantage of differences
in consumer valuations. For example, a consumer with a high income or with
an urgent need may be willing to pay a higher price for the

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same product than another consumer with a lower income or no immediate
need. If sellers can distinguish between these consumers, they can charge a
higher price for the former and establish a lower price for the latter. Group
discounts or senior discounts are based on this principle which is an example
of third-degree price discrimination.
Discriminatory pricing based on identification is called third-degree price
discrimination. In the absence of a means to identify consumers, sellers have to
rely on the incentives of each group to select an intended variety. This
condition is called the self selection or incentive compatibility requirement
(see section 8.4, "Pricing Digital Products," for more detail). This means that
given optimal product choices, consumers will sort themselves out according
to product characteristics and a price schedule that reveals their preferences.
This scheme based on consumers' voluntary choices is called second-degree
price discrimination. First-degree or perfect—price discrimination refers to
charging individual prices for each buyer, which are usually determined by the
consumer's maximum willingness to pay.
Discriminatory pricing should be used whenever possible because it is always
more profitable than uniform pricing (Phlips, 1983, p. 18). Not surprisingly,
price discrimination is a common practice. However, these are usually
second-degree price discriminations based on incentive schemes, or
third-degree price discriminations based on consumer groups. First-degree, or
perfect-price discrimination requires detailed consumer information, and the
ability to charge different prices for different consumers. Therefore, prices are
individualized to extract all individual consumer surplus and reselling among
consumers must be prevented. This possibility was once considered to be only
of academic interest, but the increasing availability of detailed consumer
profiles based on electronic transactions information greatly reduces
information uncertainty—a major impediment to practicing perfect price
discrimination. Sellers are increasingly able to introduce individualized prices
through online price negotiation and auctions.
In electronic commerce, the combination of three factors raises the possibility
of perfect-price discrimination. First, sellers gain detailed information about
consumer tastes. Second, products can be customized without much
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added cost. And third, consumers can be billed independently. In each of these
aspects, physical markets are highly constrained by transaction costs consisting
of information costs, product variation costs, and costs for elaborate billing.
Variations in Consumption Values: a Simple Case of Price

Discrimination
Discriminatory pricing does not necessarily accompany product

differentiation; it can be used independently as well. One requirement for price
discrimination is the seller's ability to differentiate customers and charge them
individually by using, for example, identification cards or personalized billing
accounts. A demand schedule for a hypothetical product is shown in figure 8.3.
The demand schedule, curve ACB, is drawn by positioning all consumers by
their willingness to pay, starting from the highest point on the left to the lowest
point on the right of the quantity axis.
Figure 8.3 Consumer surplus and revenue.

The demand curve shows that, at a price D ($10), for example, the demand is
at E, 20,000 units. If 20,000 units are sold at $10, the total revenue is the area
ODCE, which equals $200,000. While the 20,000th customer, the marginal
consumer, pays exactly the amount he is willing to pay, all others, the
inframarginal consumers, pay less than what they are prepared to pay. The area
ADC is the sum of the benefits consumers retain from this market. If the seller
has information about each consumer's valuation and is able to negotiate the
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price with each, he can charge each consumer what they are prepared to pay.
For example, Alice who has the highest valuation at, say, $100, is asked to pay
$100. Otherwise, the seller refuses to sell while preventing all others from
reselling or sharing theirs with Alice. Also knowing that Bob has the next
highest valuation at $80, the seller demands $80 for Bob, and so on. In this
case, the area ADC is the potential gain for the seller who engages in
discriminatory pricing instead of using $10 posted price for all its customers.
Ordinarily the negotiation process and information gathering requirement
would be more costly than the extra revenue. But when the transaction costs
decrease significantly, discriminatory prices can be justified. Electronic
commerce appears to be one market where this is the case.
Product Matching
Whenever possible, sellers charge different prices for the same product.
Discounts for groups, children, students, and senior citizens are used to
increase demand without lowering the price for other groups. In this case,
discriminatory prices actually help serve more consumers and increase
economic efficiency and social welfare. But in most cases, products are
differentiated for specific consumer groups. If these differentiated products
have different prices due to cost differences, these prices are not
discriminatory. However, price differentials may not correspond to differences
in costs. For educational markets, for example, software vendors may
intentionally disable certain functions and capabilities of a program to
distinguish these products from those for non-educational markets. Despite the
added cost of disabling the program, products for educational markets are
lower than their commercial versions (Deneckere and McAfee, 1996).
Dividing audience seats by sections in a theater achieves a similar effect.
In physical markets, the key to effectively segment the market with
differentiated products is knowing what one feature each group of consumers
wants that is not wanted by other groups. To prevent high-valuation customers
on the left side of the demand schedule from masquerading as low-valuation
customers on the right side of the demand schedule, sellers must be able to
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distinguish buyers through some means of identification. In both third- and
second-degree price discriminations, the power of the sellers is limited and
incomplete because they still cannot discriminate consumers within each
group.
In electronic commerce, sellers may finally have the means to practice
first-degree price discrimination by which each individual buyer pays the
maximum price they are willing to pay. In order to achieve a complete price
discrimination, sellers must have control over four factors of transactions:
preference profile, product differentiation, personalized billing, and consumer
arbitrage. Product differentiation is not a fundamental requirement, but it does
reduce the resistance of consumers and regulators to discriminatory prices, and
it also prevents or minimizes consumer arbitrage.
The control over preference profile means that sellers must know what each
customer wants. To date, market research and surveys have been important
aspects in product development and successful retailing. As society moves
from anonymous cash transactions to card-based payments and electronic
payment systems, sellers find it easier to collect information about consumers'
purchasing behaviors. In electronic commerce, this possibility is magnified
exponentially. But the possibility of gathering extensive personalized
information is not guaranteed in the future. Anonymous transactions lessen the
sellers' discriminatory power over consumers. To complete the sellers' market
control, the payment system must be non-anonymous to prevent one consumer
masquerading as another. Because consumers are becoming increasingly
aware and resistant to releasing private information, it is difficult to predict
what kinds of pricing regime will be prevalent in future electronic commerce.
But with the trend toward selling personalized products via subscription, there
will be in all certainty a heightened debate regarding consumer privacy and
anonymity in transactions and payments. At present, the debate revolves
around the privacy right, free speech, and other legal points of view. Instead,
this chapter focuses on the economic links between privacy and product
selection as well as price discrimination.

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8.2. Product Customization
Digital product markets will differ significantly from physical markets both in
terms of production and marketing. For online marketing, the emphasis is on
the interaction between the seller and its customers. This increased interaction
is important in production as well. This section examines why product
differentiation becomes the most important aspect of digital goods production
and evaluates the economic benefits and costs of varying product specification
to the extent of customization.
The distinction between product differentiation and customization may be
considered by the economic literature to be a simple matter of degree. A finely
differentiated product can indeed be considered to be customized. However,
product customization goes far beyond producing a limited number of brands
or qualities of a product, and it raises completely different economic issues.
The number of differentiated products in a market has been an important issue
in the economics of product differentiation where efficiency in production is
often achieved by a standardized product. However, cost-reducing mass
production technology is no longer a major concern for digital products, where
the cost of reproduction becomes minimal. The economic efficiencies that this
section is concerned with are not those of economies of scale but rather those
that relate to product matching and reduced uncertainties in market demand.
Apart from this, product customization is an important strategy which
addresses the problem of unauthorized reproduction and distribution of digital
products by consumers. Finally, because customization is predicated upon
detailed information about consumer preferences, it is intrinsically related to
issues such as digital copyrights and privacy.
Sellers' Use of Transmutability
As we discussed in Chapter 7, "Consumers' Search for Information," in

relation to searches, information filtering becomes increasingly critical as
consumers are faced with an overload of information. To process and select
only
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relevant information, consumers use filtering agents or programs that not only
weed out irrelevant information but also organize and present relevant
information in a format useful to them. Filtering agents, to be reliable, must be
trained by the user, who specifies the appropriate selection criteria. However,
this filtering process may be undertaken by the seller rather than the consumer:
if a producer modifies the product according to the user's criteria, the product
becomes customized. In this regard, product customization is simply an
example of filtering accomplished by the seller.
A seller uses product attributes to differentiate products. There may be many
factors that determine the quality of a product. In the case of an information
service, this could be timeliness, detail, response time, and so on. Let a vector
Si, where i = 1,..., k, represent these quality attributes. For example, S1 may be
timeliness, S2 may be whether it accommodates graphics, S3 may be the size
of the file, and so on, up to k different variables. By mixing these variables, the
seller practices product differentiation.
For a simple case of product differentiation, let's consider when consumer
valuations change with respect to timeliness of information. Suppose that a
seller sends information to buyers according to a prearranged delivery
schedule. Each buyer's value is a simple function of the order in which they
receive the information. Thus the value continues to decline as the delay
increases but this does not affect the values to the earlier buyers. If the seller
announces different prices for different delivery times, for example $10 for
instant delivery, $8 for a five-minute delay, and so on, his product is
differentiated because delayed information has a lower value than
up-to-the-minute information. In this case, discriminatory prices are
implemented conventionally by pricing the product as a function of
time—buyers reveal their preferences by deciding how urgent their needs are,
and by paying their reservation prices. Priority-based prices of this type are a
result of product differentiation where the product content is preserved but the
access privileges are varied.
A slightly different procedure of this principle involves selling multiple
versions of a product while charging different subscription fees for each class
of information even when they are delivered at the same time. In paper-based
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information industries, products typically contain superfluous information not
desired by some consumers. Instead of printing several versions, newspapers,
for example, contain many sections in an unmanageable volume, which often
makes finding the right information difficult and creates waste. Special interest
magazines and newsletters have developed from the need for more focused
information delivery. Specialization also implies more in-depth and thereby
useful information.
With digitization, newspaper publishers are now focusing on customizing their
products. For example, Personal Journal (http://bis.dowjones.com/pj.html)
offered by Dow Jones & Company, Inc., publisher of The Wall Street Journal,
allows subscribers to create their own portfolio of companies and stock
information. Any relevant news or articles involving these companies and
stocks are delivered to the subscriber. It is aptly advertised as not requiring
consumers to surf or search to obtain the relevant information. Instead, the
filtering or customization of information is performed by the seller.
Similarly, the PointCast Network (http://www.pointcast.com) delivers
customized news based on personal news profiles. It is supported by
advertising and anyone can download the software for PointCast Network to
receive personalized news for free, which is presented on its version of a
screen saver called SmartScreen. Current news is downloaded when the user's
computer is inactive and is organized in channels ranging from headline news,
company profiles, weather, sports, industries, and so on.
Both these examples of customization are based on horizontal product
differentiation, where products differ in choices but not in quality. With
horizontally differentiated products, prices are often uniform because the cost
of allowing choices typically does not justify charging different prices. For
example, each subscriber of Personal Journal may follow a different set of 25
companies, but the number of firms is the same for all subscribers (see figure
8.4). However, products are vertically differentiated if the difference lies in the
number of companies that one can select. For example, one customer may be
allowed to select 50 firms instead of 25, where the number represents one
dimension of product quality. Prices will also vary according to the number of

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firms selected. A simple price schedule may be linear based on a fixed amount
for each company selected, for example $0.25 per company. A more complex
pricing strategy involves quantity discount or discounts based on tiers. Such
relationships between product differentiation and pricing are discussed in more
detail in section 8.4.
Figure 8.4 An example of customization.
Gains and Losses from Customization
The primary economic benefits of product customization stem from the fact
that products match consumers' needs better than undifferentiated products
which correspond to the taste of the average consumer. For sellers, better
product matching means a reduced opportunity for consumer arbitrage. For
consumers and society, customized products reduce wastes but may cause
higher prices.
Consumer Arbitrage
By customizing their products, digital product sellers can discourage

consumers from unauthorized reproduction and distribution. In the example of
customized news services, the product delivered to one person may not be
valuable to another if they are interested in different sets of companies.
Because digital products are prone to copyright violations by users,
personalized
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products have an obvious advantage if unauthorized distribution (consumer
arbitrage) is limited. Limiting consumer arbitrage is the most important
requirement for successful discriminatory pricing. For example, if a seller tries
to charge different prices to different buyers in a situation where buyers are
able to exchange products, buyers who pay the lowest price will try to resell to
others. Therefore, the seller is not able to charge any price higher than the
lowest price.
Reduced Waste
Industrial goods manufactured with mass production technologies have made

many convenience goods more affordable to more consumers than ever before,
but these products are often made for the average or representative consumer.
For physical products such as toothbrushes, one or a few differentiated models
may suffice to satisfy the needs of the majority of consumers. Digital products,
however, are more individualized. For example, people read a newspaper for
various reasons—today's headline news, sports scores, weather, want ads,
entertainment, and so on. To accommodate these needs, a newspaper carries all
types of information, but many sections are never read. However, a digital
newspaper does not need to be constrained by printing technologies that have
shaped the way newspapers are produced and distributed in the physical world.
Instead of simply producing an electronic edition of a newspaper consisting of
the same material as the paper version, a digital newspaper can be customized
to deliver only the information needed by readers, who are no longer faced
with the disposing of unwanted portions of the newspaper.
Reduced personal arbitrage also supports discriminatory prices, which means

that sellers can charge the maximum amount that consumers are willing to pay.
With no possibility to arbitrage, the price can be monopolistically determined.
The most important aspect of discriminatory pricing is that prices are based on
user valuation, not on production costs. In a competitive market where sellers
do not have market power, prices tend to equal marginal costs
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regardless of the level of user valuation. Consumers retain any surplus, which
is the difference between what they are prepared to pay—the so-called
reservation prices—and the prevailing market price. In non-competitive
markets, prices tend to approach the monopoly level at which consumers are
made to pay the highest price. When consumers differ in their valuation, firms
with market power try to individualize prices to further discriminate customers
by using such measures as multi-part tariffs. Customization is an extreme
example of the individualization of products and prices.
In electronic commerce, a pricing strategy based on user valuation is more
prominent because of product customization. Due to the product's
reproducibility, the marginal production cost of digital products is negligible,
so marginal prices have little significance in determining efficient prices.
When copyright payments are considered as variable costs of production,
competitive prices may amount to these payments. More likely, an efficient
and competitive electronic market may have prices based on average costs of
production where each firm is at its break-even level of production. A detailed
examination of costs and prices is postponed until the last section of this
chapter, but it is emphasized here that the standard economic argument that the
market price is equated with the marginal cost (price = marginal revenue =
marginal cost) has little relevancy in the digital marketplace. Copyright
payments, as variable costs, also may not be uniform but variable for every
instance of sale, moving further from today's practice that distinguishes
payments according to major sales channels. Rather, the transmutability of
digital products together with readily accessible consumer information in
electronic transactions help authors or firms to focus on discriminatory pricing.
Under this type of market condition, consumers are forced to choose between
buying products that match their tastes and paying their reservation prices, the
highest level of prices. To determine which choice results in greater consumer
welfare requires a full specification about the value of having products that
match consumer tastes. But generally, discriminatory pricing may involve a
transfer of income from buyers to sellers. In a case when previously unserved
consumers buy products because new brands are offered, the market becomes
more efficient with product differentiation.
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8.3. Use of Consumer Information

The ability to effectively customize a product depends on the producer's
knowledge of what a buyer wants. If consumer tastes vary greatly—as is
evident for knowledge-based products—products tend to be more
differentiated, but if tastes are similar, firms are required to produce fairly
similar products. A wide distribution of taste means that consumers are
scattered throughout the product's characteristics space; if consumers'
preferences are alike, they are bunched in a smaller area. Therefore, it is
important to know where consumers are located. Market surveys are one way
to gain such information, but surveys only measure relative shapes of the
distribution. In contrast, consumer information collected on the Internet not
only reveals the shape of the preference distribution but also identifies which
consumers want certain products. This section examines what type of
consumer information is collected and how it is currently used in electronic
commerce. Future methods of information collection are discussed in Chapter
12 (see section 12.5, "The Virtual Economy in Action"). Depending on how
the information is used or traded among sellers, it may be used to erect entry
barriers and reduce competition in digital product markets.
Primary and Secondary Consumer Information
Identifiable consumer information was an integral part of marketing strategy

even before the advent of electronic commerce. To obtain a customized
product, a prospective buyer needs to reveal its preferences to the seller.
Buyers today are required to fill out personal information in most economic
transactions or use non-cash payment methods that leave a trail of information.
As a result, when a consumer visits a gas station to change oil for his car, he
will not only get a reminder for another oil change in a few months but will
also receive advertisements from tire stores, automotive supply stores, and so
on. In turn, this personal information is often sold to a third party, who dissects
and analyzes the information by cross referencing and matching it with other
data.

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The raw data collected in transactions is considered primary information, while the
cross-matched processed data is secondary information. The real power of compiling a
consumer profile lies in the processed information. For example, suppose that an airline tries
to promote its new East-to-West Coast flights. To send mass-mail advertisements, it needs to
select a target audience—this may include people who have rented cars in New York and
Los Angeles and who frequently make coast-to-coast long distance calls, and so on. Given
the willingness of those who have primary information to provide the data, this type of
targeted advertising has become a lucrative revenue source for telephone companies, credit
card services, and Internet search services. Visa (http://www.visa.com), for example, has
introduced a service which allows banks to analyze the consumption habits of its
cardholders, giving banks another source of revenue in the tight bank card business. By
cross-referencing this with other information such as telephone call records, hotel
reservations, and so on, any seller can establish a detailed profile for virtually anyone.
A proposed Minnesota bill (H.B. 2816, available at http://www.epic.org/
privacy/internet/MinnHB2816.html) defines identifiable consumer information as
information that
● Identifies a person by physical or electronic address or telephone numbers
● Identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific materials or services
● Identifies Internet sites visited by a person
● Identifies any of the contents of a person's data storage device
The first item above is the conventional definition of identifiable information, while the
remaining three arise in electronic commerce because of the nature of communication on the
Internet. The public has access to a great deal of personal information. According to a
disclosure by Equifax (http://www.equifax.com), a credit reporting agency, a credit report
typically contains the following:
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● Identity information: name, current and previous addresses, date of birth, marital
status, and social security number
● Employment data: present position, length of employment, and previous jobs
● Credit history: credit experiences with specific credit grantors
● Public record information: civil suits and judgments, tax liens, bankruptcy records,
and other legal proceedings recorded by a court involving a monetary obligation
● Credit inquiry information: a listing of all credit grantors who have requested a copy
of the person's credit life within the last two years. (From Equifax FAQs)
(http://www.equifax.com/consumer/faqs/answer7.html)
Even universities routinely sell their lists of student names and addresses to outside
merchants who want to use them for marketing purposes. Controlling this information does
not pose a significant legal challenge. What is at issue in terms of economics is the use of
consumer profiles that describe a person's consumption behaviors and preferences collected
on the Internet through subtle methods such as menus given to web browsers. Unlike
information such as names, addresses, and social security numbers to which laws governing
consumer protection and disclosure may already apply, there is no basic agreement on how
to treat consumer information gained by processing communications data.
Because data gathering activities are based on monitoring Internet usage, a leading legal
question is the degree of monitoring allowable in electronic transactions. Currently, web
servers record the domain name or IP address of a visitor, the time accessed, the action such
as downloading (GET commands in figure 8.5), and the document accessed. By accessing
the preference setting that users specify in their browsers, servers can also record the
person's name, affiliation, address, and so on. Cookie technology allows servers far more
sophisticated operations, which not only record access activities but also interact and control
these activities (see the sidebar, "Cookies and Consumer
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Information"). Excessive monitoring is also a concern at workplaces where employers can
monitor computer usage by employees for use in evaluating work performance. Workplace
computers are routinely used for auditing, tracking, and process accounting, but there is
always room for abuse.
Figure 8.5 An example web access log.

Cookies and Consumer Information
What Is a Cookie? Cookies are text files stored at the client's (that is, visitor's)
hard drive (usually in the Preferences folder). When a web browser requests a
document using Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, the web server
generates a piece of data which is sent to the browser and stored at the
browser's (client's) computer. Later, when the browser requests another
document, the cookie is sent along with the request. The piece of information
given by the web server is called a cookie and may contain various types of
data that can be defined by the server.
Why Do We Need Cookies? A cookie on the Internet is much like the caller ID
provided by telephone companies by which a telemarketer can bring up all
relevant customer information—name, address, previous purchase payment
records, and so on—by the time a sales representative answers a call. A web
site consists of many files stored in various subdirectories, and, when a client
accesses a particular page or document, a separate web connection is made and
the previous connection is lost. Suppose that a web grocer divides all its
merchandise in subdirectories such as produce, meat, and drinks.
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When a customer moves from the produce section (that is, page) to the meat
section, the customer is actually making a separate call, to use the telephone
analogy. To provide a continuous service so that the customer can browse
different pages, select items, and pay for all items at once, a continuous
database (or connection) of the customer is needed. The cookie technology is
therefore necessary in the web environment to overcome the lack of continuity
in connection. Such an environment without a persistent connection is called
"stateless." In this sense, a cookie is often referred to as persistent client state
information.
What's in a Cookie? Currently, a cookie contains the following five information

fields: data string, expiration date, domain, path, and security preference. A
detailed specification for cookies is available at
http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html.
(1) The most common field of information (and the only required field) in a
cookie file is the data string in the form of name=VALUE. Name can be any
variable name followed by any VALUE assigned by the server. For example,
strings such as
Customer_Name=Alice_Arthur
Taste=Historical_Fiction
Item_Number=Part0012
Payment_Preferred=Ecash
can store information about the customer's name, preference or taste, the item
purchased, or the payment method used. The remaining four fields of
information are optional.
(2) The expires=DATE attribute sets the valid lifetime of a cookie.
(3) The domain=DOMAIN_NAME field specifies the host name of the server
which generated the cookie. A client searches its cookie file to find all
matching cookies so that they may be sent to a server when requesting a
document.
(4) The path=PATH attribute specifies the subset of web pages (URLs) for
which the cookie is valid. The most general path is "path=/" which indicates
that the cookie is valid (or should be sent to the server) for all pages. If the path
is not specified, the default path is the current page when the cookie is sent by
the server.
(5) Finally, a cookie may be specified to be sent only when the communication
channel is secure by including the secure command. If secure is not specified, a
cookie is sent without regard to security.
continues

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continued
Clickstream. The path attribute is the second most important piece of information stored in a cookie
by which a server can keep a log of the pages that a client visits. For example, suppose that Bob is an
online bookseller specializing in mysteries and historical fiction. All entries of mystery books are
stored in "/mysteries" subdirectory, while historical novels are in "/historical_fiction" subdirectory.
All other books are in the root directory ("/"). When Alice connects to Bob's home page, Bob sends a
cookie to Alice with the following information:
Customer_Name=Alice; path=/; expires=Friday, 31-Dec-99 23:59:59 GMT
This cookie is valid until the end of 1999 for all Bob's pages including all subdirectories. Thus, Alice
sends the information Customer_Name=Alice whenever she accesses Bob's site. When Alice
accesses a mysteries page (/mysteries/mystery_list.html), Bob sends Alice another cookie with the
information:
Taste=Mysteries; path=/mysteries; expires=Friday, 31-Dec-99 23:59:59 GMT
which is valid for the all pages in the "/mysteries" subdirectory (and all subdirectories below that
directory). Therefore, when Alice visits Bob's web site the next time, her browser checks all its
cookies (by the domain name) and selects all cookies that match Bob's domain name. Then, her
browser sends all cookies valid for the specific path. For example, if Alice wants to look at the file
"/mysteries/mystery_list_update.html", she should send both cookies containing the information
Customer_Name=Alice and Taste=Mysteries.
Other Uses of Cookies. The information provided by cookies can be used to customize web pages
and sales. When caller ID is augmented by a computer database, a sales representative has all the
information it needs to assist the customer or to target the customer for specific sales. Similarly, a
web server may present a different web page to each customer based on the information provided by
cookies. Customers are not required to enter user name, passwords, or other registration information
repeatedly. Also, cookie-generated web pages can adapt to the needs of dynamic interactive
communications without much hassle. With such tools, web customers are made to talk to
"personalized" sales representatives who can best assist them.
Another potentially interesting use of cookies is to distribute customer-specific coupons as cookies.

For example, suppose that a customer has visited a certain page (perhaps one that provides an
advertisement), and the merchant sends a coupon-cookie to the customer. When the customer
accesses a different page (where a sale product is displayed), she sends the cookie which counts as a
discount coupon to the purchase of that item.
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The clickstream information is extremely valuable to a web administrator in improving the efficiency
in web access. For example, a log file of all accesses during a month may reveal that a particular
page (or an item) is most popular, but its location requires many clicks through subdirectories. Such
pages may be rearranged based on user access patterns, resulting in an easy and convenient usage.
Privacy and Anonymity
The debate about privacy of Internet transactions focuses on the right of consumers to control the use of data
about themselves. Not surprisingly, consumer information collected by monitoring the World Wide Web has
become a contentious issue. Consumer information is inevitably revealed in ordinary business transactions, and
when products are customized, the most valuable commodity is the information about consumers' preferences.
The impact of firms' using this consumer information can be quite significant. Targeted junk mail based on
previous purchase records may be the least worrisome aspect of this abuse. More seriously, a person may be
denied medical insurance or a loan from a bank, or may be fired from work because of information that may not
be voluntarily available. In terms of economics, the use of consumer information can lead to price discrimination,
which often involves monopoly prices.
Anonymity as a Myth
We have seen that information contained in a credit report is quite extensive. However, we tend to think that such
information is difficult to collect and disseminate on the Internet because of the anonymity. Anonymity, the
absence of identity, is pervasive in Usenet discussion groups where participants find it useful to assume an
"online identity" to engage in sensitive or inflammatory discourse. Anonymity can encourage political speech,
reducing the risk of punishment, and it is useful when requesting sensitive, personal, and potentially embarrassing
information and services. But at the same time, this advantage may elicit criminal, unlawful, or libelous conduct.
How anonymous is
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Internet communication? Although the Internet affords a far greater degree of anonymity than physical markets,
many cases of anonymous messages can actually be "traced" back to the original sender, which is often necessary
if one desires a reply. Untraceable anonymity requires either an unscrupulous remailer—or a proxy server—who
forwards messages without attaching information about the original sender, or a remailer who destroys its log
information. To optimize anonymity, one can route one's message through several remailers, all of whom must
cooperate to divulge the identity. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that the majority of Internet messages are
traceable and identifiable, and consumers are unaware of being identified.
A popular myth was declared, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" (The New Yorker, May 7, 1993, p.
61) (see figure 8.6). In reality, the server computer knows a lot about its client. You can test how much a server
knows about yourself by logging into the Anonymizer.com server (see figure 8.7). The sample data shows your
affiliation, location, the type of computer and browser that you use, the mode of connection, and the pages you
have visited at the server. The use of Java-based applets and cookies further necessitate establishing traceable
identity on the Internet. And applets often establish a concurrent, third-party connection, as seen with advertising
banners which send and receive information from a different site than the document they are shown. Therefore,
even when personal information is offered voluntarily, there is a danger that that information may be collected by
a third party, who disguises itself as a legitimate server. This is called spoofing (see "Internet Resources" at the
end of this chapter). But, there are at least two other ways besides anonymity to maintain consumer privacy.
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Figure 8.6 The Internet dog.

Figure 8.7 Information collected by Anonymizer.com server.

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Legal Efforts to Protect Privacy
Techniques to preserve privacy do not necessarily conceal the identity of the

sender or the receiver, instead they protects the content and integrity of a
message or a transmission by keeping it secret and private. Encryption
technologies address the need to keep contents, but not identity, private.
Anonymity, however, bypasses the privacy issue by concealing identifiable
consumer information and makes secondary information useless as it cannot be
cross-referenced. Besides relying on anonymity, however, consumers may be
protected from illicit gathering and use of their identifiable information either
by legal and regulatory efforts or through trading personal information in an
open market.
Various privacy laws restrict the distribution of identifiable consumer
information. While the issue of anonymity is involved with free speech, the
First Amendment, as well as libel law and copyrights, the focus of this
discussion is on the control over the use of consumer information. The legal
basis of consumers' control of personal information is found in the Fourth
Amendment right to privacy, which protects persons against illegal searches.
Just like homes, personal information may be considered to be in private
domain. For example, personal information may be given to another for the
purpose of a transaction but with a specific restriction. Suppose Alice buys a
document called "How Not to Take a Bath for a Week" from Bob, he does not
have an explicit right to inform everybody that Alice indeed purchased that
product, therefore insinuating that Alice is a filthy person. To protect his
business, Bob probably will not willingly divulge such information, but
additional revenues from such a sale have proven to be an effective lure for
many sellers.
The legal approach toward privacy is to clarify the restrictions for appropriate
conducts among transacting parties. For transactional purposes, Bob can
clearly have a right to obtain and verify Alice's identity. Even in cash
transactions, laws require vendors to verify personal information, for example
with alcohol, tobacco, or prescription drug sales. Legal guidelines, however,
are clearly lacking as to what Bob can do with his customer information.
Because much of this information is publicly available, consumer rights are
often
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limited to correcting errors and updating one's data, while information and
direct marketing industries operate under a largely self-regulatory policy
toward privacy, under which consumers can request that their names be
removed from their database. Relying on self-regulation does not afford
consumers any legal recourse to address what they regard as a blatant misuse
of their information. Juno Online Services (http://www.juno.com), a free
e-mail service company, used to display their promise not to sell or distribute
its subscribers' information, but its actual agreement reserved their right to do
so. Upon confrontation by the New York attorney general's office, Juno's
president affirmed its policy not to distribute personal information, saying:
"We didn't anticipate doing it, didn't intend to do it and didn't do it."
(Newsday, December 11, 1996, A51, as quoted in Edupage, a mailing list
distributed by [email protected]).
Instead of relying on the grace and trustworthiness of each seller, efforts are
under way to elucidate the rights and obligations of transacting parties. The
Minnesota bill aims at regulating the use and distribution of personal
information by information service providers, by requiring sellers to obtain
explicit consent from their customers to disseminate their personal
information. Consent is obtained in a written agreement where consumers
specify whether they do or do not object to the release of their personal
information. Going a step further, however, related legal and regulatory
hassles can be avoided by establishing consent with contracts or agreements to
sell in the market.
Market-Based Solution to Protect Personal Information
Although some sellers are indeed surreptitiously collecting consumer

information, others offer some type of service in exchange for voluntarily
revealed information. For example, a free Internet e-mail service provider,
Juno Online Services (http://www.juno.com), offers its free service because
they make their profits from advertising. CyberGold
(http://www.cybergold.com) also offers similar service where clients are paid
for reading advertisements. Whether the payment is in the form of free service
or money, both Juno and CyberGold leverage identifiable consumer
information through market mechanisms.
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Juno's clients first answer about 20 questions for their Member Profile. Then
Juno selects and sends targeted advertisements that are displayed as a banner
on their e-mail reader program (see figure 8.8) or as a separate web page.
Based on consumer-revealed information, Juno brokers between consumers
and advertisers, where consumers have merchandised their private information
for service or money. Similarly to CyberGold, Millennium Interactive
Technologies Corp. (http://www.mitnet.com) proposes to forward e-mail
advertising to its subscribers who get credits. Firefly (http://www.ffly.com)
offers various Internet services such as newsgroups, discussion groups, and
chat rooms where like customers exchange product reviews and
word-of-mouth information. Firefly in turn offers a specialized interaction
group as a niche market to advertisers.
When one can obtain free service or monetary compensation based on one's
personal information, how would anyone be allowed to freely collect and
process such information? Should the collection of personal information using
cookies (see the sidebar in section 8.3 for cookies) and similar technologies be
prohibited? If there is a market price for consumer information, that product is
to be "exchanged" rather than "surrendered" when accessing a web site. In
such a case, what would be the equitable price for the goods being exchanged,
that is the product sought by the consumer and the information sought by the
seller? Prices for information that used to be freely or publicly available have
not been researched properly by economists, but they will demand more
attention in the future. One problem in determining a proper price for
consumer information is the truthfulness of voluntarily revealed information.
Firms such as Juno may have to rely on an incentive compatible mechanism to
induce consumers to truthfully reveal personal information. (See section 8.4,
"Pricing Digital Products," for incentive compatible mechanisms.) A
fundamental incentive is the cost in reading uninteresting advertisements,
which discourages someone to lie.

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Figure 8.8 Juno's advertisement is placed as a banner while a user reads or

writes an e-mail.
Finally, note that the issue of privacy goes beyond devising legal or market
protection for personal information. As stated earlier, complete anonymity
depends on the trustworthiness of the third party who mediates a message
transfer or a transaction. Intermediaries, therefore, can introduce proper
measures to ensure consumer privacy. Secondly, privacy in transaction is an
important issue in electronic payment systems. Separate from the security
issue of protecting credit card numbers and the like, an added concern is
preserving the privacy of buying habits and other consumption-related
information when transactions are conducted using digital credit cards and
digital currency. Payment-related issues are examined in Chapter 10,
"Electronic Payment Systems."
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Consumer Information and Discriminatory Pricing
The effect of sellers' use of information about market behavior on consumer

welfare is important to consider. Sellers of information argue that it reduces
prices and enables consumers to buy better products because sellers gain
efficiency in production and marketing. These benefits are possible, but so are
other scenarios. Prices might actually increase, sellers may even refuse to sell
to certain "identified" customers, and only profitable types of products may be
marketed. The economic arguments against information revelation are
numerous, but the possibility of first-degree price discrimination based on
consumer information has largely been ignored.
For some products, consumers voluntarily reveal their needs and preferences.
For others, reluctant consumers have raised the issues of anonymity and
privacy in transactions. Faced with informational uncertainty, the sellers want
to know consumer's private information as much as the buyers want to know
the quality of the product. But, a seller with consumer information may set
prices according to an individual consumer's marginal valuation rather than the
marginal cost of the product. If the firm does not restrict the quantity, there is
no loss in social welfare (the sum of the seller's and buyer's surpluses). Indeed,
unlike monopoly prices, discriminatory prices generally increase market
efficiency by expanding the market and allocating resources according to
consumers' marginal willingness to pay.
From a distributional point of view, the gain to consumers may be lower than
the benefit to the sellers. Under perfect price discrimination, a seller sells his
product by charging the maximum price each consumer is willing to pay. This
may be socially efficient but consumers are seldom willing to pay the highest
price without complaint. Moreover, the firm may prefer to restrict quantity or
refuse to deal with some consumers based on their profiles. In a sense,
consumers lose their bargaining power by revealing personal information to
the firm.
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If a buyer's identity is not revealed, the pricing strategy will usually be
conventional. For example, suppose Charlie sells an online magazine in a
market where there are only two consumers: Alice and Bob. Charlie knows
that one of them will value his magazine at $10, and the other at $5, so the
seller has only a general knowledge about the distribution of consumer
preferences and values. Also, suppose that consumers likewise are not sure
whether the magazine will be worth $10 or $5 prior to purchase. When
consumer identity is not known to Charlie, he can only price his magazine at
$7.50, the average price. Because that price is the average, both Alice and Bob
are likely to buy it at that price. However, one of them will be disappointed
after finding out that the magazine was worth only $5. This conventional
pricing and sale works if
1. The sale occurs only once
2. Consumers do not know their valuation of the product prior
to purchase
3. The seller cannot distinguish between its customers
If sales are based on repeat purchases, consumers learn product quality, and
either Alice or Bob will drop out of the market after the first bitter experience.
Then, Charlie can price its magazine at $10 and sell only to the remaining
customer. This higher price is only possible after consumers learn about the
product's quality or about their valuations of the product. Otherwise, if the
product is offered at $10 in the first period, no one will buy it because the price
exceeds the average valuation—the amount both Alice and Bob expect to get
at the maximum.
What is the benefit to the buyer if the buyer reveals private information?
Suppose Alice is the one with high valuation and Bob has the low valuation.
Then, it may be beneficial to Bob if Charlie is willing to charge a lower price
of $5—assuming that this price is still higher than the cost. On the other hand,
Alice will not reveal her preference and pretend to be Bob, because she enjoys
a positive surplus at $7.50 or at $5. Therefore, revealing private information is
beneficial to consumers with low valuation. Those with high valuation must be
given sufficient incentives to reveal their preference.
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An ideal pricing scheme calls for charging Alice $10 and Bob $5. To
implement prices based on consumer valuations, Charlie needs to know the
identity of the buyer, and have a means to prevent Bob from buying two copies
and selling a copy to Alice at a price lower than $10 (this is consumer
arbitrage). The latter can be prevented if he sells only one copy to each
customer, but this requires the ability to identify and distinguish his customers.
In the absence of identifiable information, Charlie can only sell his magazine
at $7.50 for one-time customers, or at $10 and forgo part of the market (again
assuming that consumers know the product quality). The result is that Bob is
either disappointed (or enraged by a "rip-off") or not served.
In sum, by revealing their information, more consumers may be served and
products will be at their valuation. Similarly, discriminatory (or differential)
prices allow sellers to serve a larger market, increasing market efficiency. But,
as mentioned earlier, charging different prices involves some consumers
paying a higher price than in a market with incomplete information. Therefore,
sellers need some mechanisms to satisfy consumers who are charged
differently. One is differentiating products to persuade them, rightly or not,
that they are buying different products. If products are differentiated in a way
to segment the market, Alice will not pretend to be Bob in order to pay a lower
price. The next section continues this discussion and other strategic
considerations involving product choice and pricing.
It suffices to note here that although the prospect of complete price
discrimination is great in electronic commerce due to the availability of
identifiable consumer information, many arguments can be made in favor of
allowing sellers access to such information. The previous example identified
two such arguments: consumers with different valuations can be served, and
products can be tailored to match differences in consumer tastes. Furthermore,
information on the market and consumers has a value of its own. If not, there
would be no incentive for market research. The value of market information
derives from its use in reducing uncertainty in the quantity and quality
demanded for a product. The reduced uncertainty helps formulate more
effective competitive strategies as well as regulatory policies. With an
uncertain demand, a firm's fixed investments may result in waste from idle
production

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capacity, misjudgment of consumer tastes, an so on. An informed firm can
increase its profit by reducing this waste as well as by finding markets that
uninformed firms may not serve. More precise demand information and
production creates increased satisfaction for consumers, who are no longer
uncertain about the quantity and product specification.
In fact, Ponssard (1979) has demonstrated that consumer welfare increases
when firms have better information on market demand. However, his model
also shows that the increase in profit and the value of the information
diminishes as more firms acquire this information. Ponssard refers to
information about the market in general, not about individual preferences. As
long as the better information is about the market but not about identifiable
information, resolving market and demand uncertainties does not pose a direct
threat to consumer welfare. For example, better economic planning can benefit
all sectors of society and, even when consumer information is used to
customize products, consumers do not suffer losses if the new products are
sold to indistinguishable customers. It's only when consumer information is
linked to payment and thereby to discriminatory pricing that we are presented
with both the gain in total welfare through efficiency and the loss in consumer
surplus due to higher prices. In electronic commerce, both the availability of
identifiable consumer information and the use of product differentiation
greatly facilitates discriminatory prices, alternatively known as differential,
nonlinear, or non-uniform prices.
8.4. Pricing Digital Products

Basic economic research shows that in a competitive market prices are
determined by the level of demand and the cost of supply, or production. In
other words, the market-determined price is efficient in terms of production
and consumption, and the firm operates efficiently at the lowest average cost,
while no consumers who are willing to consume the product are denied.
However, digital products fall into a gray area where such standard economic
reasoning
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fails to give an insightful answer to business professionals looking to know
how to price their products. The foremost difficulty stems from the cost
structure of digital products, which is unlike that of most physical products.
Furthermore, most digital products are customized and consist of numerous
component products. As a result, neither the seller nor the market can be
expected to operate with one price for all differentiated products and for all
consumers. Rather, pricing strategies become as complex as the products
themselves and their applications. This section reviews the economic factors
that influence digital product pricing and examines various strategies of
multi-product nonlinear pricing, which operates under atypical market
conditions.
Cost Curves
Introductory economics and management classes teach that the total cost of
production consists of fixed cost and variable costs. The fixed cost is the initial
investment needed to produce the first unit, such as the factory, machines, and
research and development. Once production begins, the fixed cost does not
vary whether the firm produces one unit or one thousand units, and thus it is
also known as "sunk cost." The variable cost, on the other hand, is the sum of
the material and labor costs that are needed to produce each unit.
Consequently, the variable cost of producing ten units may be ten times the
cost of producing one unit.
Standard U-Shaped Average Cost Curve
Figure 8.9 shows typical shapes of fixed and variable costs. Graphs A and C
are total fixed and total variable costs shown in terms of the number of the
output (Q). In this case, the total fixed cost is constant over a range of output
because it is "sunk" at the beginning and does not increase as the output is
raised. The total variable cost increases proportionately to the number of
output, but later increases at a faster rate due to congestion, which is one
example of disecon-omies of scale. As more employees are put to work to
increase the output beyond an optimal level of operation, the per-unit variable
cost increases faster and productivity decreases. The total cost of
production—the sum of total
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fixed and total variable costs—understandably increases as output is increased.
However, the per-unit cost of production, or the average cost, behaves quite
differently. For example, the average cost may decline until the maximum
level of operation and increase afterward. The decreasing average cost is first
due to wider sharing of the fixed costs. Graph B in figure 8.9 shows the
average fixed cost, which declines as an increasing number of units of output
"share" the initial cost. Graph D is the average variable cost that is constant up
to a level and then increases. The sum of B and D is the aveage (total) costs of
production shown in graph E. Because of the declining average fixed cost, the
average cost first declines but increases later when the effect of the increasing
average variable cost takes effect. The result is a well-known U-shaped
average cost curve. In terms of per-unit production cost, a production process
with a U-shaped average cost curve achieves an efficient level of production
when the average cost is at its lowest.
Figure 8.9 U-shaped average cost curve.
Average Cost Curve of a Digital Product
In stark contrast with the standard example above, the bulk of the production
cost of a digital product consists of fixed cost. Once the first unit is produced,
the additional variable costs are negligible regardless of the output level.
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Although some assume that the variable reproduction cost will be zero, the
author believes that it will be a substantial, albeit constant, amount due to the
per-copy copyright payment. Regardless of the assumption on variable costs,
the declining average fixed cost coupled with zero or constant variable costs
implies that the (total) average cost of a digital product will be similar to graph
B in figure 8.9.
Other industry comparisons may be helpful in determining the economic
implications of a declining average cost (AC). Declining average cost is
common in the utility and communications industries due to the extreme size
of the initial investment in infrastructure. As the per-unit cost of one firm
declines, it makes little sense to allow a competitor, which would result in two
firms operating at non-optimal levels of production. In these often highly
regulated industries, one firm will be more efficient in exhausting the
economies of scale manifested in the declining AC. However, the one firm, as
a monopolist, may engage in inefficient market behavior such as heightened
prices and output restriction. There is a large body of economic literature that
studies pricing practices under declining average costs, especially on how to
apply marginal cost pricing to guarantee that a natural monopolist breaks even
and still maximize social welfare (see the "Suggested Readings and Notes" list
at the end of this chapter).
The fundamental difference between a monopolist, or firms with some market
power, and a competitive firm is that a monopolist can raise prices and
increase profits without suffering a complete loss of customers. In a
competitive market, a firm loses all its customers if it raises prices above the
prevailing market level. Graphically, the difference is whether the firm's
market demand is flat or declining: a firm with market power faces a declining
demand schedule while a competitive firm faces a flat demand curve.
However, no competitive firm will survive if they have declining AC curves.
In figure 8.10, graph A shows a firm in a competitive market where only one
price (p) prevails initially for some reason. But competition implies that a
competitor will try to undercut its price, which will become zero after a round
of price cuts. At a price of zero, no firm will survive. For digital products such
as databases, many competitors would not survive if they sell similar products.

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Figure 8.10 Demand and declining average cost in competitive and

monopolistic markets.
When products are differentiated, they are targeted at different segments of a
market. Due to the reluctance to switch between products, because of low
substitutability, each seller or a differentiated product has some market power,
which produces a declining demand curve as in graph B of figure 8.10. The
price (p) and quantity (Q(AC)), determined by the AC curve crossing the
demand curve, is the break-even market solution. This price is the lowest price
possible in the market, but it is not the most economically efficient. The most
efficient solution is determined by the marginal cost. The marginal cost (MC)
curve is below the AC curve because MC must be smaller than AC at each
output level if the AC curve is to continue declining. As a result, the MC curve
crosses the demand curve at a larger output level than Q(AC). In this case, the
standard marginal cost-based pricing (that is MC = demand) results in a larger
output at a lower price than shown in graph B. Nevertheless, such a
price-quantity combination is not produced because the price and the total
revenue is insufficient to recover the total costs of production. The
price-quantity solution shown in the graph is second-best even though the firm
only breaks even.
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Because the firm has some market power, however, it may raise the price still
further. This restricts the output but increases the profit as the price is above
the per-unit average cost. Because of this profit motive, digital product prices
tend to be monopolistic: they will be higher than the marginal cost with
restricted output. The fundamental reason for this is seen in the shape of the
average cost curve. Although some argue that digital products should be made
freely available because they cost nothing to reproduce, any market price must
be sufficient for the seller to recover its fixed cost. Even with zero
reproduction costs, the break-even price is not zero, especially if the level of
demand is at the low output level where the average cost is still substantial.
Nevertheless, the valid concern remains that the seller will tend to raise prices
and restrict the number of consumers who can buy the product.
Strategic Factors in Pricing
As discussed earlier, the level of fixed cost determines the price and quantity
of the digital products produced. Here, a model that describes different choices
in fixed investments is presented. This model also incorporates the critical
issue of product differentiation, a decision that needs to be made at the initial
stage of production. Because of the transmutability of digital products, the
electronic marketplace is characterized by similar but different products. An
economic motive for differentiation is the desire to minimize the effect of
competition among identical products, which destroys the market due to the
declining average cost of digital products. Thus, this model emphasizes the
nature of multi-product production in electronic commerce. Pricing becomes
more complex when a seller is faced with many similar but different products
targeted at different segments of consumers. Our objective is to present some
fundamental principles of multi-product pricing.
Quality Choices
Conventional supply and demand models describe the relationship between the
price and quantity produced with average and marginal costs calculated in
terms of output. For physical products, such a model may be adequate because
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the primary economic concern is determining the quantity of products to
produce and their price. Most observers of the digital market realize that the
choices in terms of product quality and variety supersede concerns of output
levels in electronic commerce. The question of output level is still important
because it determines how many consumers may have access to products, but
this is an issue of price, not a question of whether material and labor inputs can
be allocated more efficiently as output increases. The resource allocation
problem for digital products occurs when the first unit of a product is
produced.
Application of the price-quantity model often results in erroneous conclusions
in the case of digital products. In general, when the price of a product equals
its marginal cost (MC) of production, the resources are allocated efficiently.
But what is the marginal cost of production for a digital product? In terms of
output, the MC is the added cost of producing an additional copy, which is
mistakenly believed to be almost zero in electronic commerce. If this were
true, an efficient price for a digital product would be close to zero, allowing
virtually free dissemination. This does not work for two reasons. At the very
least, the MC consists of the per-copy copyright payment. So an appropriate
price for any product is the amount due to the creator, which is most certainly
a non-zero figure. In addition, the marginal cost to consider is production, not
distribution, costs.
To derive the marginal cost of production, first consider the total cost function
for a digital product. A digital product may have many characteristics such as
size, the number of multimedia components, accuracy of the data, and so on.
We denote those characteristics as S1, S2, ... , Sn, having a number of n
characteristics. A digital product is thus completely described by a series of
numbers, or a vector, (S1, S2, ... ,Sn). Suppose that S1 corresponds to the
accuracy of a database, taking a value ranging from 0 (completely inaccurate)
to 1 (completely accurate). Figure 8.12 shows the total cost needed to achieve
a certain level of accuracy. The graph shows a high cost for a totally inaccurate
database because it takes time and effort to manually "disguise" the data. The
lowest point in the curve may represent the initial state of a database: it costs
Page 354
more either to intentionally make the database worse or to verify each data
entry. The optimal level of accuracy depends on the willingness of consumers
to pay for this, as represented by the line. For example, the slope of the line
indicates that consumers are willing to pay one additional dollar for every
improvement of .1 in accuracy. At S1*, the marginal cost of improving the
database's accuracy equals that marginal willingness to pay. Above S1*, the
producer must spend more than $1 to achieve an improvement of .1, which
cannot be recovered from the consumers. The producer's optimal choice is
clearly S*. Note that because the marginal willingness to pay has a positive
slope, no producers will actually attempt to corrupt the database. For this
reason, we may consider a simplified cost curve that increases for all values of
S1.
Figure 8.11 The cost curve for accurateness of a database.

A digital product producer decides on the levels of all the product
characteristics in the same way. These levels are determined efficiently if the
marginal willingness to pay is equal to the marginal cost for all characteristics.
Let S represent the aggregated characteristics of a digital product. The cost
function of this product can be specified as C(S), and its marginal cost as the
derivative of C(S), or C'(S). Given that the consumers' willingness to pay for a
level of S is W, resources are allocated efficiently if C'(S) = W = P. In other
words, the relevant price for a digital product is determined by the marginal
cost of

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producing a certain quality that is desired by consumers. The marginal cost of
reproduction or distribution has little relevancy.
Product Differentiation
A basic opportunity (and challenge) for all businesses is that consumers have
different preferences and price sensitivities. For example, suppose that some
consumers are willing to pay $2 for an improvement of .1 in accuracy—a
steeper line than the one in figure 8.11. Equating the marginal cost of accuracy
improvement to this group's higher willingness to pay will result in a higher
accuracy S1** > S1*. However, the price will also be higher so that those with
a lower willingness to pay may not purchase the improved product. To capture
both types of consumer, the producer may sell two versions of the product:
basic and improved.
In this way, product differentiation is born! This situation is depicted in figure
8.12, where the aggregated quality, S, is considered rather that the accuracy.
The subscript H (L) represents consumers with high (low) willingness to pay.
In figure 8.12, both high-type and low-type consumers get an efficient level of
quality when their willingness to pay equals the marginal cost of producing the
assigned quality. The market for each variety is separated by different prices
and qualities. The lines corresponding to consumer types can be interpreted as
indifference curves (or lines) of prices at each level of quality. Any
price-quality combination lying under the line will be a better deal because the
consumer pays less for the same quality. In this interpretation, each type of
consumer prefers what is targeted for them, as the alternative always lies
above their indifference curves. Implementing product choice and pricing
strategies of this type requires the seller to know the consumers, or the market
demand. In fact, analysis of market segmentation and collection and
processing of consumer demand information form the foundation of product
differentiation.
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Figure 8.12 Selling differentiated products to two consumer groups.
Incentive Compatible Prices
Assuming that the digital product producer does not face direct competition,
there are ways to increase profit. In figure 8.12, PH and PL are equal to the
marginal cost of production. In terms of output, they are equal to the average
prices for breaking even. When raising prices, the firm needs to consider the
interaction between the two groups of consumers. At some price-quality
combinations, high-type consumers may prefer to buy the low-quality product,
and low-type consumers may purchase the high-quality product. To maintain
targeted marketing, the firm has two alternatives.
One method of customer targeting is to negotiate with each consumer—that is,
to give a "take-it-or-leave-it" deal. A strategy of this type works only if the
firm knows its consumers well. With increasingly detailed consumer profiling,
this type of information may be available in the electronic commerce world. In
addition, the firm should also be able to prevent consumers' reselling among
themselves, as some might find it profitable to exchange products among
themselves.
The second alternative is to craft the offer (prices and qualities) in such a way
that high-type consumers have no incentive to purchase the product intended
for low-type consumers, and vice versa. In this scheme, both types of
consumers benefit from buying what is intended for them, or at least they will
be indifferent. This strategy is called an incentive compatible (IC) solution.
Page 357
The resulting profit level is lower than the first alternative because there is
some cost necessary to maintain incentive compatibility. Nevertheless, an IC
solution does not require the seller to have detailed information about
consumers, who sort themselves out according to their type.
The cost in maintaining the IC solution stems from the fact that at least one
type of consumer, or a segment of a market, has a choice. For example, if both
types have no ability to switch products, the firm is free to charge whatever it
wishes, just like individual negotiations. However, if both types can switch,
the market is not at all separated. To illustrate the cost of the IC condition
graphically, see figure 8.13. In this modified version of figure 8.12, the firm
decides to raise the price of the high-quality product whose intended customers
have a higher willingness to pay. The initial price-quality combinations are A
(PH, SH) and D (PL, SL). As the firm increases the price for its high-quality
product, high-type consumers move from A to B and then to C. Choice C is
the maximum price the firm can charge because it intersects the origin where
both price and quality are zero, signifying no purchases. If the firm raises the
price beyond C, high-type consumers simply do not buy. However, high-type
consumers may simply switch to D because it lies below the curve going
through C, and thus it represents a better deal which is in fact better than not
buying any product. Because high-type consumers have alternatives, the
maximum price that the firm can charge is B, at which point high-type
consumers are indifferent between the high-quality product and the
low-quality product.
Low-type consumers, meanwhile, do not have an incentive to switch to the
high-quality product as all combinations of A, B, and C are above their
indifference curves and represent a worse deal. In sum, the firm would like to
charge C, but is constrained to charge a lower price, B, because it cannot force
high-type consumers to stick to the high-quality product. This consideration is
known as the incentive compatibility constraint, and it limits the firm's profit
maximization. Regardless of the limitation, because B is above the original
price, A, the firm makes positive profits. An astute firm first raises the price
for the low-quality product, maximizing the profit from low-type consumers,
and only then it should raise the price of the high-quality product to the IC
level.
Page 358
In this way, low-type consumers are charged their maximum price while
high-type consumers in general pay a price somewhat lower than their
maximum, B, rather than C.
Figure 8.13 Incentive compatible product choices.

The incentive compatibility condition exists whenever products are
differentiated and the seller can enforce product choices by intended consumer
groups only through market mechanisms. This type of pricing practice is
known as second-degree price discrimination. A common example of this is
the quantity discount where, as one purchases more units of a product, the
per-unit price is lowered. Considering different bundles as differentiated
products, high-type consumers buying a bigger bundle are charged a lower
price per unit than low-type consumers.
Another instance where the IC condition applies is when prices are divided
into access and usage charges—for example, an entrance fee to an amusement
park where each ride cost extra, or a long distance calling plan that charges a
fixed monthly fee plus per-minute usage charges. Similar non-uniform prices
and multi-part tariffs are intended to separate consumers by their preferences,
and in general high-type consumers receive a relatively better deal due to the
IC condition.
The complexity in pricing digital products stems from the need to differentiate
products and devise pricing strategies that separate consumers according

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to their willingness to pay. Our discussion of incentive compatibility is
meaningless if the market consists of consumers with identical tastes. In this
case, one price for one product suffices and is determined by the market
demand. Many have observed that such simplified pricing strategies work well
for information products in physical markets. For example, newspapers charge
a uniform subscription price; cable operators charge one price for a bundle of
basic channels. However, prices for a newspaper differ between delivery and
vending, and discount prices are available for student and delivery plans. Even
cable service is increasingly divided into many tiers to reflect the diversity in
consumer tastes. The physical and technological constraints that have largely
influenced the way newspapers and cable services are sold will no longer be
paramount for digital products. Nevertheless, some pricing strategies used in
physical markets may be used in electronic commerce: for example, leasing
options, subscription-based pricing, and bundling techniques may be
employed.
Selling versus Renting Digital Products
A basic truth of marketing is that if the value of a product is much less than the
cost or price of the product, not a single consumer will be willing to purchase
it. Even in this case, sales are possible. In such a situation, a group of
consumers may form a club if each individual's share of the price and the
accompanying transaction costs, such as waiting time for one's turn, are still
lower than the price of the product. A club good is classified between a pure
public good and a pure private good (Buchanan, 1965). A pure public good is
one whose optimum number of users is all consumers in the market, while this
number for a pure private good is one—here, individual consumption is
preferred. The optimum number of users in club goods is determined by the
marginal condition that the benefit of adding a marginal member must be equal
to the associated cost. When forming a club to share a product, several factors
must be considered: the group's benefit may increase by adding a member
(association benefits), the user cost may increase (congestion effects), or the
production cost (purchasing price) may be lowered (economies of scale).
Page 360
Association benefits are common in social clubs but not in private good clubs,
although a similar benefit is observed in pure private goods such as computer
software, which is called a network effect. Congestion effects are evident in
the example of library books, where more members create more waiting for a
turn to borrow. The economy of scale effect is simply the reduced per-member
cost to purchase a book. Taking the price as fixed cost, this is quite similar to
the case of declining average cost, which is not surprising because natural
monopolies in utility industries are forms of clubs.
When a product has a cost structure of this type or is prone to a sharing
arrangement, a viable club can be formed (see Sorenson et al., 1978), but the
seller may find it more profitable to arrange a sharing scheme himself instead
of selling directly to the consumers. A product sharing scheme initiated by the
seller, who maintains ownership of the product, is known as renting or leasing.
The objective is to discourage arbitrage by consumers and to avoid the
restrictions imposed by the first sale doctrine.
A library is an example of a sharing mechanism by which consumers who are
not willing to pay for a book may still use it. Suppose that Peter is trying to
sell a book titled The History of Libraries priced at $20. If Alice thinks that
reading the book is worth more than $20, she will prefer to buy it. However,
Peter cannot sell it to anyone whose value for the book is less than $20. Still, if
there are 10 people who each considers the book to be worth $5, their total
valuation sums to $50. Suppose that the cost of sharing, in this case waiting to
borrow, is $1. The maximum price that can be charged for the group of 10 is
$4. Peter can either sell two copies of his book at $20 each, or one copy at $40
if he is able to separate the library from the retail market.
Sharing arrangements are common when a product is used only once and the
quality of the product is not degraded. However, if a product is used more than
once, consumers may prefer to buy it outright, especially if the sharing cost is
high enough to justify the sale price because the total cost of an alternative to
buying includes transaction costs. For instance, for casual reading, many
depend on borrowing from a library, but they prefer to have their own copy if
they plan to read a book more than once. Because the cost of
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borrowing from a library includes waiting time and the fact that one can only
use the book for a limited time, the sum totals of these transactions costs and
the sale price determine whether the consumer buys or shares. For digital
libraries, both of these transaction costs may be negligible unless artificial
restrictions for check-out and returns are imposed.
Sharing or renting is often preferred by the seller even for those whose
valuation of the product exceeds the sale price. The reason for this has less to
do with the desire to exploit the residual market; controlling consumer
arbitrage is a important goal of the seller. After consumers buy a product, the
first sale doctrine allows them to do whatever they want with it. The first sale
doctrine means that a buyer may resell, rent, lease, or dispose of a product at
will after the purchase. Copyright protection only applies to copying or
reproducing the content of the book, and does not apply to selling the original
copy. In contrast, renting or leasing does not change the ownership of the
book, and here the first sale doctrine does not apply. In this case, the owner of
the book (the seller) may establish certain rules regarding its use. A very
elaborate form of such contractual restrictions is implemented by software
licensing, which not only controls how many persons can use a program but
also how often it is used in a given time period with the help of
use-measurement software.
For functional products such as software, licensing may be an adequate
method of maintaining ownership. However, as the complexity of networks
and computer usage increases, a more flexible licensing regime is required.
Although the number of licensed sites or users is relatively easy to manage,
there is no adequate method of monitoring access and time of usage. Licensing
terms are becoming increasingly complex—an increasing number of large
corporations rely on third-party asset management firms to keep track of
software purchases, updates, and usage.
Subscription and Bundling
Bundling of computer programs is one of several factors that complicates

software licensing. Software vendors find it profitable to bundle products,
some of which are used only on a limited basis, because buyers are often

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willing to pay for these products on a sharing basis. For these products,
however, use-based distribution may be more efficient. Applets, for example,
are needed on special occasions and are subsequently discarded after use. This
strategy would not only be more efficient but is also consistent with the desire
to minimize the effects of easy reproduction.
First, let's differentiate the concept of bundling from similar practices. The
practice of bundling refers to packaging two or more products and selling the
bundle in fixed proportions. In other words, if you buy 10 bundles, you get 10
units of each component of the bundle. Components of a bundle sold
individually as well as in bundles is called a mixed bundling strategy.
Microsoft, for example, uses a mixed bundling strategy in selling its various
programs (including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) individually or as
a bundle in a Microsoft Office suite. Narrowly defined, bundling always refers
to a group of different products. When the bundle consists of the same product,
this is called quantity-dependent pricing. For example, computer diskettes are
sold in packages of 10 where the price is often lower than the sum of 10
individual diskettes sold separately. Also, bundling is different from tie-ins,
where a buyer of one product is also required to buy another product. But
unlike bundling, a buyer may consume different numbers of each component.
Thus, if Word and Excel programs were tie-ins, one can buy only one Word
program and be able (or, in some cases, the consumer is forced) to buy 10 or
20 units of Excel.
Adams and Yellen (1976) first showed that bundling is a useful price
discrimination method, especially when valuations are negatively related. For
example, suppose there are three consumers (Alice, Bob, and Charlie) and two
computer programs (Learn a Language, and Learn to Paint). The valuations of
three consumers for the two products are as shown in figure 8.15. Valuation
for Learn a Language is $40, $50, and $60 for Alice, Bob, and Charlie,
respectively, while valuation for Learn to Paint is the same as above but in the
reverse order of Charlie, Bob, and Alice. Suppose that both products cost $40
to produce. If sold separately for $50, Learn a Language will be sold to Bob
and Charlie, with a total profit of $20. Learn to Paint will fetch the same profit
but will be sold to Alice and Bob. If the price is increased to $60, only one unit
of each product will be sold—Learn a Language to Charlie and Learn to Paint
to
Page 363
Alice—which results in the same $20 profit for each product. However, if they
are bundled and sold at $100, all three will buy the bundle, and the total profit
is increased to $60. Although the increased profit from bundling may appear to
be due to the negative relationship in the demand for Learn a Language and
Learn to Paint, studies have shown that the negative correlation is not
necessary for bundling to be more profitable than unbundling (Spence, 1980,
under quantity-dependent pricing; Schmalensee, 1984, because of bunching
consumers; and Salinger, 1995, for the reason of reduced cost). A positive
relationship may be depicted as both demand curves have negative slopes or
positive slopes compared to figure 8.14. McAfee et al. (1989) also show that,
in most cases, a mixed bundling strategy almost always increases the seller's
profit when compared to pure bundling or non-bundling.
Figure 8.14 Negative relationship in valuations for a bundle.

Although the advantage of using mixed bundling is well known, most Internet
services are sold by subscription without offering an usage based payment
option. Because of this, some argue that microproducts and micro-payments
will become irrelevant in electronic commerce (Odlyzko, 1996) as digital
product sellers are increasingly bundling their products and selling them as a
package. Even downloadable applets, they contend, will be sold on a
subscription, not on a per-use, basis.
Subscriptions are also favored in other communications media such as cable
television, telephone services, and magazines. Subscription-based services
Page 364
are often priced at a flat fee, and provide no control over consumer usage. For
example, America Online (http://www.aol.com) recently introduced a flat-fee
subscription schedule which greatly increased the Internet connection by its
members and aggravated congestion problems. If congestion is a potential
problem, subscription fees can be differentiated either by using two-part tariffs
of access and usage charges or by introducing a series of subscription tiers.
One reason why consumers favor fixed monthly fees based on a subscription
plan is to balance expected fluctuations in consumption. Consider the example
of telephone services. Even though telephone companies offer a lowest-price
service with a minimum monthly charge but with a limited number of phone
calls allowed, most consumers opt to pay a higher monthly charge with
unlimited local calls even when they seldom make that many calls in a month.
One explanation is that consumers may anticipate an increased use of calls in
an emergency, and with the limited call plan, each call over the limit will cost
a premium. Thus, subscribing to the higher-priced service is a better option for
risk-averse consumers. Similarly, cable customers find a bundled service to be
more desirable than separately paying for each channel or pay per view.
However, this conclusion, based on non-digital markets, may not be valid in
electronic commerce. In physical markets, options presented to consumers are
often incomplete. For example, a cable service has never been offered to
consumers where one can truly select any number of channels. Most likely, the
lack of this option is due to technological reasons, but if it were feasible, cable
operators might have introduced such an option simply because it allows finer
segmentation of the market. The effort to segment the market is seen in
mushrooming cable service tiers. Typically, these tiers are vertically
differentiated by quality in such a way that a standard basic tier (a low-quality
product) is included in an expanded basic tier (a high-quality product). Such
product pricing schemes are aimed at differentiating those who are willing to
pay more for better quality from those who are not. This type of pricing is one
example of second-degree price discrimination as discussed in section 8.1,
"Product Differentiation and Pricing in Economics."

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The Case for Microbundles and Micropayments
If there is a cost-effective way to provide a service that offers consumers to

choose any combination of channels or programs, prices will reflect the cost
and some consumers will benefit from unbundling and unsubscription as well.
The lack of consumer choice is somewhat responsible for the low, overall
cable subscription rate that remains between 60 percent and 70 percent of the
homes passed by cable. Today's cable subscription scheme resembles the
licensing and bundling of software where the seller exploits the residual
demand. Selling only a bundled service forces some consumers to pay for
unnecessary items unless an option to buy an unbundled product is available.
In electronic commerce, currently employed technologies offer more choices,
and accordingly traditional pricing models observed in physical markets do not
reflect the dynamics of the electronic marketplace.
Most information products are sold as bundles. Newspapers, databases, and
magazines all contain various items of news, data, and articles. Although
individual items in these examples may be sold separately, the demand in the
market often does not justify individual sales. The primary reason is that the
price of offering an individual piece of news or data often far exceeds what an
interested buyer is willing to pay. For example, a newspaper containing about
50 pages of news and information cost about 50 cents. Suppose that the value
of each page ranges from one cent to 10 cents. The distribution of this value
differs according to each reader's preferences among a variety of interests,
such as world or local news, lifestyle, entertainment news, sports, business
news, and classified advertisements. Nonetheless, the sum of the consumer's
values on individual items must exceed 50 cents to justify buying the
newspaper. At the least, cost savings from bundling allows the seller to offer a
price low enough to attract customers.
A cost-saving strategy has its own costs, however. Many pages of a newspaper
are wasted to those who do not value those pages. And secondly, some
consumers are denied the sale of a newspaper when their total valuation is
below 50 cents. For example, if someone only wants weather information, a
bundled newspaper does not serve his need for information. Both of these
Page 366
inefficiencies can be eliminated if the publisher is able to offer individual
articles or sections as well as the newspaper as a bundle—using a strategy of
mixed bundling.
To unbundle and sell an individual item at such a low price, cost-effective
technologies for production, distribution, and payment are essential. For
newspapers, electronic commerce offers such technologies and an opportunity
to gain market efficiencies. Even though electronic newspapers are sold by
subscription, some forms of micro-subscription will offer all the advantages of
an unbundled service. Subscribers to a digital newspaper paying a fixed fee for
identical reproductions receive a product similar to a paper newspaper.
However, if the digital newspaper is customized, and consumers are able to
select only those items that interest them, the subscription service differs from
newspaper or magazine subscription in physical markets. Importantly, this
eliminates waste and provides service to more segments of the market.
Already, digital news items can be produced and delivered as an individual
product or as a microbundle. A mechanism for micropayments remains to be
implemented to support mixed bundling in electronic commerce.
This section cautions against the notion that digital product pricing will closely
resemble physical product pricing regimes where bundled products are sold at
a flat-fee, ignoring qualitative differences in production, delivery, and
consumption process in electronic commerce. Indiscriminate bundling and
subscriptions based on flat fees cause congestion, inefficient resource
allocation, and other problems. Because technological constraints in physical
markets do not exist in electronic commerce, the ability to select and buy an
individual item needs to be expanded. Another critical advantage of mixed
bundling and microbundles is that they help resolve uncertainties about
quality. Unbundling digital products, by either selling individual items or by
allowing customization, encourages consumers to sample quality by accessing
a portion of the product. An option for micropurchases gives valuable
information to consumers to learn about the quality of the product.
Micropayments and digital currency involve critical technologies to implement
unbundling and micropurchases which are further discussed in Chapter 10.
Page 367
8.5. Summary
Our discussion in this chapter focused on three related issues: product
differentiation, price discrimination, and the use of consumer information.
Because of their transmutability, digital products are extremely customizable.
When individual preferences are known, the seller has an incentive to price
customized products according to the consumer's valuation. However, the very
nature of digital products raise the issue of control. Sellers are concerned with
how consumers use the product, and most importantly with rampant
unauthorized reproduction and distribution. One means for sellers to
discriminate its customers, that is to charge different prices, while preventing
consumer arbitrage, is an incentive compatible pricing strategy.
The electronic marketplace may be the most advanced in terms of
communications and transactional efficiencies. But, from an economics point
of view, the practices of product differentiation and non-uniform pricing
complicates the task of determining the competitiveness and efficiency of the
overall market. Non-sale methods, such as licensing, leasing, bundling, and
subscriptions, are prevalent in electronic commerce because of the concern for
copyright infringement and the influence of physical markets. These pricing
strategies are relatively simpler to analyze and implement, thus they are
eagerly implemented compared to mixed bundling and non-linear pricing
strategies. Electronic commerce offers fresh ground for research in the areas of
quality choices and multi-product pricing, giving economists an incentive to
explore such areas, with a wide ranging empirical applicability.
Simultaneously, market processes of production, delivery, payment, and
consumption for digital products will be quite different from those for physical
products. As pricing strategies cannot be evaluated without considering all
market processes, it is unwise to treat digital products as we do their physical
counterparts or to carelessly convince digital product sellers that existing
economic models can simply be reinterpreted for electronic commerce.
Page 368
References
Adams, W.J., and J.L. Yellen, 1976. "Commodity Bundling and the Burden of
Monopoly." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 90: 475_498.
Buchanan, J.M., 1965. "An Economic Theory of Clubs." Econometrica, 32:
1_14.
Chamberlin, E.H., 1933. The Theory of Monopolistic Competition.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Degryse, H., 1996. "On the Interaction Between Vertical and Horizontal
Product Differentiation: An application to banking." The Journal of Industrial
Economics, 44(2): 169_186.
Deneckere, R., and R.P. McAfee, 1996. "Damaged Goods." Journal of
Economics and Management Strategy, 5(2): 149_174.
Hotelling, H., 1929. "Stability in Competition." Economic Journal, 39: 41_57.
McAfee, R.P., J. McMillan, and M.D. Whinston, 1989. "Multiproduct
Monopoly, Commodity Bundling, and Correlation of values." Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 93: 371_383.
Odlyzko, A., 1996. "The Bumpy Road of Electronic Commerce." Presented at
the WebNet '96 conference, October 16_19, 1996. An electronic version is
available at http://aace.virginia.edu/aace/conf/webnet.html.
Salinger, M.A., 1995. "A Graphical Analysis of Bundling." Journal of
Business, 68(1): 85_98.
Schmalensee, R., 1984. "Gaussian Demand and Commodity Bundling."
Journal of Business, 57: S211_30.

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Sorenson, J.R., J.T. Tschirhart and A.B. Whinston, 1978. "Private Good Clubs
and the Core." Journal of Public Economics, 10: 77_95.
Spence, A.M., 1980. "Multiproduct Quantity-Dependent Prices and
Profitability Constraints." Review of Economic Studies, 47: 821_42.

Nonlinear Pricing
Nonlinear pricing is used in a wide variety of situations when there is

incomplete information, and its application is seen in utility pricing, block
tariffs, bundling and bunching, and incentive compatible solutions in taxation
and quality choices.
For a good introduction to pricing strategies under decreasing average cost, see
Train, K.E., 1991, Optimal Regulation: The Economic Theory of Natural
Monopoly, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
For incentive compatibility, see Myerson, R.B., 1985, "Bayesian Equilibrium
and Incentive Compatibility: An Introduction," Social Goals and Social
Organization: Essays in Memory of Elisha Pazner, L. Hurwicz, D. Schmeidler
and H. Sonnenschein, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
For block tariffs and nonlinear prices, see Schmalensee, R., 1981,
"Mono-polistic Two-part Pricing arrangements," The Bell Journal of
Economics, 12: 445_466; Goldman, M.B., H.E. Leland and D.S. Sibley, 1984,
"Optimal Nonuniform Prices," Review of Economic Studies, 51: 305_319;
Maskin, E. and J. Riley, 1984, "Monopoly with Incomplete Information," The
Rand Journal of Economics, 15(2): 171_196; and Armstrong, M., 1996,
"Multiproduct Nonlinear Pricing," Econometrica, 64(1): 51_75.
Page 370
For quality choices and nonlinear pricing, see the seminal paper on the subject
by Mussa, M. and S. Rosen, 1978, "Monopoly and Product Quality," Journal
of Economic Theory, 18: 301_317.
The problem of stability in tariff-like pricing is discussed in Sorenson, J.R.,
J.T. Tschirhart and A.B. Whinston, 1978, "A Theory of Pricing under
Decreasing Costs," American Economic Review, 68(4): 614_624.
Product Differentiation
Horizontal product differentiation was first discussed in Hotelling, H., 1929,

"Stability in Competition," Economic Journal 39:41-57.
A linear city used by Hotelling assumes that two individuals located at each
end are quite different. That might be reasonable in geographical
differentiation, although the earth is round. Product characteristics space may
be better represented by a circular city model where every consumer finds a
similar taste in each direction. For this latter specification, see Perloff, J.M and
S.C. Salop, 1985, "Equilibrium with Product Differentiation," Review of
Economic Studies 52: 107_20.
Hart, O.D., 1979, "Monopolistic Competition in a Large Economy with
Differentiated Commodities," Review of Economic Studies 46: 1_30,
discusses the Chamberlinian model of monopolistic competition.
A general introduction of the topic with industry practices is by L. Phlips,

1983, The Economics of Price Discrimination, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lewis, T. and D. Sappington, 1994, "Supplying Information to Facilitate Price
Discrimination," International Economic Review 35(2): 309_327, examines
whether a firm has an incentive to allow consumers to try out its product.
Page 371
Internet Resources
Customized Internet Products
Personalized news by PointCast Network: http://www.pointcast.com.

Personal Journal (a newspaper) by The Wall Street Journal:
http://bis.dowjones.com/pj.html.
Personalized, remote shopping by Personal Shoppers:

http://www.yourcommand.com.
Privacy on the Internet
Privacy & Anonymity FAQ: Available through anonymous FTP to

[email protected], in the directory /pub/usenet/news.answers/net-privacy/.
Internet Privacy Coalition: http://www.privacy.org/ipc/, whose mission "is to
promote privacy and security on the Internet through widespread public
availability of strong encryption and the relaxation of export controls on
cryptography."
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): http://epic.org, which is "a
public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994
to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect
privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values."
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): http://www.eff.org, maintains an
extensive database of materials related to the privacy issue on the Internet
including texts of proposed legislation. These files may be obtained through its
web page or via anonymous FTP to ftp.eff.org in the /pub directory.
Page 372
A 1996 Georgia Tech survey found that many web users are against disclosing
their personal information. The survey result is available at
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys.
Cookies
For technical specification, see

http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html.
JavaScript Tip of the Week: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about
Cookies available at http://webreference.com/javascript/961125/index.html.
"Are Web-Based Cookies a Treat or a Recipe for Trouble?", PC Week article,

June 26, 1996. Available at
http://www.pcweek.com/reviews/0624/24cook.html.
For cookies related sites, visit Malcom's Guide to Persistent Cookies resources
at http://www.emf.net/~mal/cookiesinfo.html.
Spoofing on the Internet
Princeton research report on spoofing is at

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/pub/spoofing.html.

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CHAPTER 9
Financial Intermediaries and

Electronic Commerce
Playing the devil's advocate, you can ask whether using the Internet to transact
financial business will bring about a fundamental change in financial markets
and institutions that are already at the forefront of electronic transactions.
Banks, for example, already clear their accounts via domestic and international
electronic funds transfers (EFTs). Today's security markets also use highly
automated account-clearing systems and automated exchanges. The New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE, http://www.nyse.com), for instance, has allowed
after-hours electronic trading without specialists since 1991, while stock or
commodity traders have access to around-the-clock electronic markets through
Reuters Holdings' Instinet (http://www.instinet.com) or Jeffries Group's Posit.
Although clearly advanced, these technologies are generally limited to
business-to-business transactions. Using the Instinet for financial transactions
will affect not only the already sophisticated financial institutions but
individual consumers and businesses. By expanding the use of electronic
technologies to consumers and non-financial institutions, the Internet not only
economizes costs but also provides opportunities to reinvent business
processes and to develop radically new products and services.
The advent of electronic payment systems and electronic commerce
undoubtedly signal the next stage in the evolution of financial institutions and
Page 374
markets. Technology has changed the banking business and financial-service
sector many times in the past by transforming the way people pay for goods
and services and the way financial markets are organized and operated. With
each new introduction— the telegraph, wire transfers, EFTs, credit cards, and
automatic teller machines—financial markets have become more convenient
and efficient. It is still too early to predict how electronic commerce will
change the financial market's organization and institutional structure. But this
chapter provides an analytical framework for evaluating such a question by
identifying the roles of financial intermediaries in traditional capital markets,
and then examining which aspects of the new technologies of electronic
commerce will affect these roles.
Many financial products and services can be digitized and analyzed as digital
products. Digital cash—already considered the next "killer application" for
electronic commerce—is a digital product whose viability will be determined
by market supply and demand. Virtual banks, such as Mark Twain Bank
(http://www.marktwain.com), and certification authorities (CAs), such as
Verisign (http://www.verisign.com), deal with digital currency and digital
certificates, which are poised to compete with traditional financial
intermediaries for business. Furthermore, a number of firms are trying to
capitalize on the Internet by using the Internet and the web for initial public
offerings of their stocks, which are then traded in automated 24-hour
stock-trading markets on the net. The Internet is well-suited for this because
stocks and other forms of financial claims are excellent examples of products
that can be digitized. In sum, although their role is clearly one of a vehicle of
change for other businesses entering the electronic market, financial
institutions will undergo a transformation as well. This chapter focuses on the
effects of this transformation on financial intermediary markets for security
and asset brokerage, asset transformation and financial information trading.
Chapter 10 follows up by discussing another important function of financial
intermediaries: payment-related services.
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9.1. Types of Financial Intermediaries

Chapter 4 introduced in detail the role of the intermediary in the context of
quality uncertainty and market efficiency. Financial intermediaries are just one
example of intermediaries for digital products, in this case for digital financial
and payment services. In many ways, their function is similar to that of other
intermediaries outside electronic commerce.
Cable News Network (http://www.cnn.com), for example, serves as an
information intermediary, collecting, combining, and selling information
products—leveraging the needs of information producers and consumers.
More importantly, CNN also acts as a quality guarantor, whereby information
buyers are assured by CNN's reputation for the quality of their news. Likewise,
firms trading on the NYSE are credible as an investment opportunity, as a
news report broadcast on CNN is credible as a source of information. NYSE's
member firms are also subject to the exchange's rules and regulations, which
engenders confidence among investors in the trading environment and the
firms.
Despite the significant role the financial sector plays in our economy (see
sidebar, "The Financial Sector"), there is a dire lack of studies dealing with
banks, insurance companies, or brokers at the institutional level. To understand
how electronic commerce will affect the future of these institutions, you must
first investigate their functions and, second, analyze how these functions will
change given new technologies and market conditions.
An intermediary is a middleman who facilitates transactions between potential
traders. Intermediaries conduct the following activities:
● Match buyers with sellers (broker, see section 9.2, "Transactional
Efficiencies")
● Buy goods from sellers and then sell the goods to buyers (retailer, see
section 9.2)
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● Buy goods and sell them after modifications (transformation, see section
9.3, "Transformation Functions")
● Sell only transaction-related information (information brokerage, see
section 9.4, "Information Brokerage")
The first case describes a simple brokerage connecting a buyer with a seller.
The more buyers and sellers the more marketable a commodity becomes
because the probability of finding a match increases. A corollary to this,
however, is the increased difficulty in matching bid and ask prices to complete
the trade. For example, it may take longer to contact, inquire and negotiate a
deal due to the sheer size of the market. The need for better communication
between sellers and buyers prompted the organization of exchange markets at
a central location, such as commodity trading markets or stock exchanges. In
this brokerage function, the commission paid to a broker reflects the cost of the
intermediary's search.
Commercial banks and a large group of financial institutions handling payment
clearing services are the primary players in capital markets, although we
usually distinguish them from securities exchange market players. Payment
service intermediaries go between a payer and a payee and act as account
settlers, which can be characterized as the first type of intermediaries. In this
sense, deposit-taking banks, payment clearing houses, and credit card services
are broker-type intermediaries.
In the second case, the intermediary becomes an owner-seller instead of a
simple matchmaker. Although a consignment store is a broker of the first type,
most retail stores fall under this second category. Take the historical example
of a Venetian trader, whose ship load of Eastern goods would be a loss to him,
not to Asian sellers, if his ship were to sink. Compared to a brokerage situation
in which sellers need to interact with buyers to negotiate a sale or contract
(albeit via an intermediary), in the retail scenario, the intermediary needs to be
most concerned with the ultimate buyers of the goods because the
intermediary's profits originate from the spread between the bid (of the buyers)
and ask (of the sellers) prices in the market. This spread is often made possible

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by the intermediary's economies of scale in information gathering, processing
and monitoring or from the law of large numbers—the ability to pool and
spread risks. This second case is more akin to dealers than brokers.
Traditionally, stock brokers are distinguished from stock dealers in that
brokers only match sellers with buyers whereas dealers purchase stocks from
sellers and sell them to buyers. However, both share a primary function: to
smooth out search and transaction processes among traders.
You can consider the third example of an intermediary a value-added retailer
who goes beyond simple brokeraging or distributing goods. A mutual-fund
manager who sells a share of a fund of combined products from different
producers is an intermediary of the third type because what buyers buy is
different from what sellers sell to the fund manager. This intermediary's
function involves some type of transformation in the characteristics of the
product. For example, a bank receives deposits from savers and makes loans to
borrowers. Thus, a bank is not only a dealer but also changes the nature of the
purchased product—deposits—into a different kind of financial product—a
loan.
Finally, intermediaries can function as market information service providers.
Their collection of company performance data, macroeconomic indicators,
stock quotes, and so on, facilitates financial transactions. Stock brokers, on top
of their brokerage functions, often make buy and sell recommendations to their
customers based on their own information and analysis. In this case, they are
performing two different functions of an intermediary. Publishers of financial
newspapers and newsletters, financial cable networks, and online business
information services are specialized information sellers and do not deal
directly with financial assets. In the electronic market as well, the information
function of collecting, evaluating and monitoring agents may or may not be
tied to trading of digital financial instruments.
The remaining sections revisit each of the functions of financial intermediaries
to show more clearly how the introduction of Internet-based commerce affects
each intermediary function.
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The Financial Sector
Financial markets play a key role in an economy by channeling
necessary funds from savers to borrowers who are looking to
invest in productive activities. Not surprisingly, the market and
operational efficiencies of financial markets have long-term
effects that determine the levels of future production and
consumption. In fact, the financial intermediation sector alone
accounts for over 15 percent of the gross national production in
the United States. Table 9.1 shows the amount of national income
generated by industry in 1996. The amount contributed by the
financial sector is greater than that of the wholesale and retail
trades combined and it is second only to the service industry in
sectoral importance to the national economy.
Table 9.1 National Income by Industry
Industry Billions of Dollars
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing 121.8
Mining 45.2
Construction 284.0
Manufacturing—durable goods 637.0
Manufacturing—non-durable goods 444.4
Transportation and public utilities 477.6
Wholesale trade 351.4
Retail trade 510.7
Finance, insurance and real estate 1,047.5
Services 1,458.3
Government 846.8
Total domestic 6,224.7
Source: Survey of Current Business, February 1997, Table 6.1C.

Figures are for the third quarter, 1996, adjusted at annual rates.
9.2. Transactional Efficiencies

The spread of automated financial transactions conducted over the Internet will
change the technologically less efficient traditional brokerage functions of
financial intermediation. It is no coincidence that Charles Schwab & Co., for
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example, is pushing for online ordering and payment for stocks and mutual
funds. Already, 20 percent of its business is conducted online and this figure is
projected to grow steadily over the next few years. However, electronic
markets imply more than mere automated ordering systems. A market not only
provides a meeting place for sellers and buyers but also performs other
economic roles, such as price setting, payment and delivery. Electronic
commerce offers the potential for efficiency gains in each of these
transactional phases.
Phases of Transaction
The transaction of matching buyers and sellers, which financial intermediaries

facilitate, can be broken down into the following market interaction processes:
● Search
● Negotiation
● Settlement
These processes are much like the processes of visiting a store, negotiating for
a price and purchasing an item. As in consumer searches, these processes may
proceed sequentially until a transaction is settled or may be conducted
simultaneously through a bidding or auction mechanism.
Efficiency in Search Process
As the first step in the brokerage function, potential traders need to search for
and identify trading partners in the initial search phase. After potential partners
express interest, a negotiation phase follows between sellers and buyers
regarding prices and product specifications. If they reach agreement, traders
enter into the third stage—settlement—which includes contracting, payment
settlement, and delivery.
Of these three phases, the search and settlement processes can be automated
without much difficulty. The negotiation process, on the other hand, may
require some intermediary intervention or a sophisticated automated program
to execute. Because of this, fewer examples of increased market efficiency are
seen in this phase.
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In the search phase of intermediation, market efficiency increases if the time it
takes to find someone with matching goods and needs is decreased. In physical
markets, an intermediary achieves this by transporting goods from one place to
another so that geographically distant sellers and buyers are matched. A
financial intermediary—a middleman, in essence—collects selling and buying
information (that is, bid and ask prices) and proceeds to find a match. When
the size of the market is large, as it is in electronic commerce, it becomes
increasingly time-consuming for a seller to meet all potential buyers or vice
versa. The trading floors in stock exchange markets, for example, are
fundamentally central locations where all interested traders gather to minimize
search costs.
Within the large body of economic literature focusing on search costs (see
discussions in Chapters 4 and 7), Rubinstein and Wolinsky (1987) offer a
useful comparison between a broker and a dealer, even though their model is
not set up for financial markets. Their economic model is based on an
intermediary as a time-saving institution. The transaction cost incurred by
potential traders in their model is the waiting time needed to find a trader with
matching needs or products. A middleman in such a market may act either as a
dealer or a broker, that is, he may either buy a good from a seller and offer it to
another buyer or he may simply obtain the product on consignment, paying the
seller only upon completing the sale.
The extent to which a middleman improves search efficiency for buyers and
sellers depends on how quickly a buyer and a seller find each other. Rubinstein
and Wolinsky's research determined interesting differential effects of brokers
and dealers on the gains of sellers versus buyers. They found that when the
middleman is a broker, that is, a consignment intermediary, the gains to sellers
and buyers are symmetric. In other words, the broker does not worry about the
seller's profit from the final sale price, but focuses on finding a match. But if
the middleman is a dealer, the buyer gains more from the trade than does the
seller because the middleman's bargaining position is worsened by his
incentive to unload the product. The dealer has a sunk cost (the purchase
price), which becomes a factor in negotiating with potential buyers. A simple
brokerage method results in less distortion as a market clearing system than a
dealer's market does.

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One example of an efficient trading mechanism in which the electronic
network acts as a broker is an automated electronic bulletin board. Regardless
of the difference between a broker and a dealer, the middleman's profit comes
from his ability to shorten the time and cost in finding a match. In an electronic
bulletin board, sellers and buyers still have to read or search all offers listed,
incurring considerable costs. But an intelligent software program may be used
to search and find interesting offers. Similarly, middlemen are involved in
trading places for cattle, produce, commodities, stocks, and various products,
where the marketplace or the trading floor may be considered as a middleman
for middlemen (see fig. 9.1). While middlemen representing sellers and buyers
are engaged in searches, the meeting place provides a forum for negotiation
and settlement.
Figure 9.1 Brokered markets.
Negotiation and Settlement Processes
The meeting place, or market, is where prices are discovered and sales are
made through negotiation. At one extreme, trades may be based on
take-it-or-leave-it offers with posted prices. Shopping at retail stores usually
involves posted prices. At the other extreme, prices may be settled after
exhaustive bargaining.
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Most price-discovery processes incorporate both methods: an item is offered
for a price or best offer.
Stock markets also utilize a structured bargaining process in which negotiation
proceeds with posted prices that are raised or lowered depending on supply
and demand. Ascending and descending price auctions are similarly structured
so as to adjust posted prices. This structured bargaining process lends itself to
easy automation. Computerized exchange markets in electronic commerce can
therefore integrate search and brokerage functions with the price discovery
process, and settle accounts through electronic messaging and payment
systems.
Although the electronic market offers clear opportunities for more efficient
search and settlement processes, automating the negotiation process poses
more difficulties. To incorporate the negotiation process into automated
trading mechanisms, each offer or bid has to contain extended specifications,
such as predefined price limits, volume and time, and the market has to
provide coordination and clearing mechanisms. Automated negotiation often
necessitates an elaborate process, such as an electronic auction, which requires
the continuous participation of all parties at the same time. Although
technically feasible, the difficulties involved hamper its more widespread use.
Financial Intermediaries: Electronic Market Case Studies
The following sections present two examples of using the Internet in lieu of
existing financial markets: initial public offerings (IPOs) on the Internet and
computerized exchange markets. These examples demonstrate how easy it is to
convert transactional aspects of capital markets into electronic markets. These
developments will not have a significant impact on existing financial markets
in the short run. But they are significant in pointing out the role of investment
firms, underwriters and stock brokers as artificial gatekeepers to the exchange
markets, from which they derive their income. As transaction costs decrease
via automated trading, simple brokerage (that is, executing buy or sell orders
on behalf of customers) will no longer provide a significant source of income.
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Internet Initial Public Offerings
Financial service firms channel funds from savers to borrowers by selling

financial instruments, also known as securities. These instruments consist of
primary securities issued by borrowers, often in large denominations, and
secondary securities issued by intermediaries such as commercial banks,
savings banks, savings and loans, insurance companies, mutual funds, and so
on, in more accessible smaller denominations. Stocks and bonds are primary
securities when issued for the first time in initial public offerings (IPOs),
considered a primary market. These securities can then be traded in the
secondary market, where stocks may be sold and bought. In this way, IPOs are
like new products whereas the stocks traded on stock exchanges are like used
goods.
Companies offer IPOs to raise capital for their business projects. Traditionally,
an underwriter, such as an investment bank, determines share prices, handles
the printing and distribution of prospectuses, and arranges the sale of stocks to
large institutional investors and brokerage firms. They, in turn, sell the stocks
to individual investors.
Recently, using the Internet for capitalization has become not only viable but
fashionable. In 1995, Spring Street Brewing Company, a microbrewery in
New York, offered the first Internet IPO, raising $1.6 million from 3,500
shareholders without using Wall Street underwriters. Its offerings were open to
all potential buyers without the need to rely on brokers or to pay commissions.
By bypassing underwriters and brokers, the firm and individual investors can
trade capital assets at a lower cost. Since its first Internet IPO, Spring Street
Brewery has formed an online investment and brokerage firm, Wit Capital
Corporation (see fig. 9.2; http://www.witcap.com), to promote Internet IPOs
and subsequent public trading of stocks in secondary markets. A growing list
of Internet IPO firms includes Internet Capital Exchange (http://www.
inetcapital.com) and Web IPO—Capital Formation Group (http://www.
webipo.com).
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Figure 9.2 Wit Capital home page.

Internet IPOs' main selling point has been cost reduction. Wit Capital, for
example, claims to eliminate layers of intermediaries who increase transaction
costs through commissions and inefficient operation costs. Ultimately,
however, qualitative efficiency gains will be more important to the success of
Internet financial-service firms.
Traditionally, financial brokers' access to investment information makes them
better equipped than their clients to analyze the value of IPOs, thereby
reducing the buyer's quality uncertainty. In the Internet environment, as well,
investors need to be convinced that their access to financial information is
complete and that the information is accurate. Although it is easy to convince
investors of the Internet's transactional efficiency, it is a different matter to
convince them of the quality of service, risk evaluation, and the ultimate
performance of their investment, or profits.
Although the need for information efficiency and quality uncertainty may
make many investors cautious, this does not imply that Internet capital firms
will have no substantial advantage over traditional underwriters and brokerage
firms. Consumers who have access to complete and up-to-date information
about investment projects may be more willing to forego brokerage services
and turn to Internet markets. Furthermore, as access increases informational
content and computational programs to evaluate the content, consumers will
need to rely less on brokers.

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The long-term effects on financial service intermediaries of open electronic
markets are not clear. However, in terms of the transactional functions of
financial intermediaries, using the World Wide Web to search for information
may become a model for seeking investment opportunities and potential
investors—eliminating any qualitative difference between the NYSE and
electronic markets on the Internet. Online brokerage firms are fighting to lower
processing costs and commission rates, but, ultimately, their functions will be
replaced by more efficient computer programs and electronic markets.
Nevertheless, stock brokers will survive by unbundling other service activities,
which are discussed in sections 9.3 and 9.4.
Digital Exchange Markets
Internet IPOs, as discussed, are an example of primary markets for securities

where borrowers (companies) sell claims to their assets directly to buyers.
Secondary markets for securities then develop where all non-IPO securities or
bond issues are traded without the involvement of the original seller or the
issuer. A major incentive to open secondary markets, such as NYSE, is to
provide liquidity to asset holders. Securities represent frozen money holdings
and need to be converted into money, that is, sold, if one needs access to ready
cash. Holders of an equity or a financial instrument that is not traded suffer
from a liquidity problem. Therefore, Internet financial-service firms tend to
offer both Internet IPOs and subsequent trading in secondary exchange
markets to accommodate consumers' need for liquidity. Wit Capital
Corporation and Internet Capital Exchange, for example, operate web-based
digital exchange markets.
Online sale of securities has existed for many years, but Internet exchange
markets differ considerably from computerized exchange systems. Internet
exchange markets offer an opportunity to organize new capital markets from
the ground up, whereas online brokerage services offer outlets of computerized
trading systems owned and operated by such exchanges as NYSE or the
National Association of Securities Dealers Average Quotient (NASDAQ;
http://www.nasdaq.com).
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Using screen terminals connected worldwide, investors' online access has
steadily increased over the years. Instinet (http://www.instinet.com) has
conducted real-time stock trading since 1969. Similarly, NYSE uses its
SuperDOT system to clear members' sell and buy orders electronically before
it opens for trading each day. Since 1991, the Big Board also has phased in for
its members an after-hours, fully electronic trading period between 4:15 and 5
p.m. And, in 1993, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and AT&T
introduced NYMEX ACCESS, an electronic after-hours options and futures
trading system. Despite these improvements, access to these automated
exchange systems remains limited to professionals and brokers. Access to
Instinet, for example, is limited to such security professionals as institutional
fund managers, brokers, dealers, and exchange specialists who, in turn, take
orders from individual investors.
Individual investors can buy and sell without a broker through private online
trading houses, such as Datek Securities Corp., which provides access to
NASDAQ's computerized Small Order Execution System or NYSE's
SuperDOT system. Nevertheless, these systems still rely on brokers' terminals
being linked to the computerized exchange systems of NYSE or NASDAQ,
and investors must pay commissions. Many Internet brokerages, such as
e.Schwab of Charles Schwab (http://www.schwab.com) or E*Trade online
brokerage of E*Trade Group (http://www.etrade.com), further extend access to
such computerized trading systems by allowing investors to use the web
instead of dedicated terminals owned by brokers. But the commissions paid to
the online trading houses remain substantial, ranging from $20 to $40 per
trade. More importantly, no significant change occurs in the structure of the
exchange markets, which are essentially broker-organized marketplaces that
centralize the trading and settlements of payments.
In comparison, a computerized exchange market on the Internet has the
potential to change capital markets in a fundamental way. First, because
exchange markets and brokerage firms traditionally act as coordinating
mechanisms for market clearing, their role must change when a computer
exchange takes over coordinating buyers and sellers. Second, as capital
markets expand
Page 387
to include a wide range of investors and borrowers, new types of financial
instruments and capital markets may evolve that combine equities, various
financial derivatives, and bond and commodity trading markets in one
seamless capital market.
Market clearing is mediated by brokers and dealers instead of relying on prices
that reflect the demand and supply of financial assets. The possibility of
influencing prices in a brokered market often means higher profits for brokers.
For example, brokers and dealers artificially intervene as market makers and
specialists, often widening the spread between bid and ask prices irrespective
of market conditions (Morgenson, 1996). The Securities and Exchange
Commission reprimanded NASDAQ in August, 1996 for failing to police its
brokerage firms, which used secret trading agreements to suppress competitive
effects on stock prices. An Internet-based exchange market will not only
automate ordering and settlement clearing procedures, as traditional exchange
markets have done, but will also rely on technologies to automate the price
discovery process, in which all market participants observe true prices.
Internet-based exchange markets for capital assets are a long way from
becoming a full-fledged alternative to existing capital markets. In terms of
technology, it is often said that the real-life market process is hard to program
even with a super-computer and that electronic commerce may be unable to
perform the intricate tasks of brokers observed on the floor of exchanges.
However, the behavior of brokers often adds noise to the market clearing
process instead of facilitating it. For example, price movements based on
broker-initiated spreads do not reflect a true market condition. In an ideal
market, demand and supply alone should determine prices. Automating
transactions eliminates this noise. Such an automated auction market sells
computers and software on the Internet; Onsale.com (http://www.onsale.com)
holds auctions to sell the computers online. Usually, multiple units of each
item are available for sale and the auction floor—the web screen (see fig.
9.3)—shows all bidders with their bids. Despite technologies being tested and
improved, however, it is still argued that investors, because of institutional
inertia, will stay with established markets such as the NYSE; this, in turn, will
Page 388
reinforce the advantage of size in the entrenched market, offering traders the
greatest liquidity for their assets. Although this may be true, if Internet capital
markets become accepted by traders, the liquidity of the electronic market will
increase correspondingly.
Figure 9.3 Onsale.com auction page.
9.3. Transformation Functions

Brokerage is not the only intermediation a financial intermediary can adopt to
increase market efficiency. Just as finding a suitable trader imposes costs,
products that do not match the needs of buyers and sellers become a source of
market friction and failure. An intermediary then may transform assets
purchased from sellers to better accommodate the needs of buyers. This,
obviously, involves more than buying a product from a seller and selling it to a
buyer as a dealer would do, as discussed earlier. Financial intermediaries
perform these transformations of assets in two ways: in terms of maturity and
volume.

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Maturity Transformation
Holders of financial assets have differing degrees of liquidity preference.

Some savers may anticipate expenses in six months or a year and hold cash
balances or keep their money in short-term instruments. Those saving for
retirement, on the other hand, have a longer investment horizon, allowing
banks or fund managers to invest in long-term bonds or investment projects.
Borrowers often have a longer time-horizon than do lenders.
Without the use of an intermediary, borrowers would have to deal with many
short-term lenders to finance a project. In this case, the firm would incur
higher transaction costs or may have to pay higher interest rates to obtain
longer-term lending. Financial intermediaries who accept short-term deposits
and make loans on a long-term basis can thus accommodate lenders and
borrowers with different maturity preferences.
As of now, automated transaction systems cannot perform transformational
intermediation. However, electronic markets will economize transactional
efficiency of financial intermediation and also will highlight where the
advantages of traditional institutions lie.
Volume Transformation
Similar to maturity transformation, financial intermediaries match the different

needs of lenders and borrowers in terms of volume. For example, banks collect
funds from small-scale depositors and combine them to lend larger sums.
Otherwise, the borrower would again have to locate and negotiate with
individual lenders to acquire the necessary amount of capital. Furthermore,
matching a number of lenders with a single borrower would involve more than
a brokerage function because individual lenders have different preferences for
liquidity. Thus, an intermediary smoothes out the differences in volume and
maturity of available funds.
Page 390
Electronic Commerce Effects
Although transforming the maturity and volume of available funds is an

important aspect of financial intermediation, scant literature exists on which to
base an analysis regarding the future of financial institutions. Nevertheless, a
basic conclusion is that transformation functions are one of the strengths of
traditional deposit-taking banks, whose electronic commerce strategy may be
to augment this advantage. The entry into home-banking by software
producers such as Intuit (http://www.intuit.com) or Microsoft
(http://www.microsoft.com) will have a significant effect in diverting the
customer base of traditional banks. However, while the entry represents an
erosion in the banks' power as gatekeepers to financial products, it also
challenges banks to be more creative and flexible in developing and providing
new financial services to accommodate the diverse needs of consumers and
investors.
9.4. Information Brokerage

The information function of financial intermediaries refers to the sale of
information to prospective traders of financial assets. Capital markets are
information driven and, accordingly, the economic literature on financial
markets and institutions emphasizes information asymmetry between lenders
and borrowers as the primary factor necessitating an intermediary. Often
lenders have no adequate means to monitor or verify the investment activities
of borrowers. Thus, risk-averse lenders may be unwilling to participate in
capital markets. An intermediary offers a way to share or reduce the risks
inherent to individual lenders by monitoring borrowers.
Information Uncertainty and Risk
Intermediaries are typically more efficient at monitoring borrowers because

they can access more information and process the information more
efficiently,
Page 391
and because they can reduce monitoring costs by exploiting the scale of
operation. For example, to be well informed, a trader may subscribe to various
newspapers, newsletters and databases. Subscription costs do not increase with
the amount of funds a trader handles. Therefore, the per-transaction cost of
information decreases as the scale of operation increases. Furthermore, the
efficiency in processing this information may increase over time as the trader
accumulates knowledge and expertise.
Even more importantly, an intermediary may spread the risk inherent in
uncertain projects by diversifying its portfolio. Diamond (1984) studies such a
case in which lenders contract with a risk-neutral intermediary. The
fundamental reason for increased efficiency through an intermediary in this
case is the law of large numbers. As the number of uncertain investment
projects, that is, borrowers, increases, a form of portfolio diversification
occurs. In contrast, individual investors risk a total loss when a one-project
portfolio folds. Similarly, in Boyd and Prescott (1986) and Williamson (1987),
financial intermediaries arise to economize the costs of acquiring information
through an intermediary.
This situation is completely reversed in open electronic markets. In automated
trading systems, traders bypass risk-sharing intermediaries. Thus, instead of
relying on the law of large numbers, traders must resolve the uncertainty by
acquiring more and better information. For this reason, you can anticipate
seeing more active participation from specialized information sellers in
Information Trading
Information can be key to financial intermediaries in more ways than one.

Some financial intermediaries restrict their operations to selling investment
information in the form of newsletters. Brokers and other intermediaries are
opening new business units to utilize their advantage in information access and
processing. For example, Merrill Lynch & Co. plans to organize its online
business as an information and financial service provider by offering online
investment information as well as related services, such as stock quotes and
Page 392
online statements. Numerous other news organizations and information dealers
have already staked out their web storefronts, reflecting the perception that the
Internet is truly a marketplace for information.
In choosing which method to use, a seller of information must consider the
effects of externality: the more people know about the information, the more
diminished its value. Admati and Pfleiderer (1986, 1990) distinguish between
direct and indirect methods of selling financial information under externality.
Direct sale refers to the unconditional selling of information to buyers. For
example, subscribers to newsletters purchase unrestricted use of the
information for any investment purpose. An indirect sale of financial
information refers to a case in which a stock dealer presents buyers with a
choice of stocks to buy. Buyers do not observe the information, but only the
stocks chosen on the basis of the information.
In the case of direct sale, buyers use the information to maximize their gains
from trading; the information is revealed in the market price or price
movement. Admati and Pfleiderer (1986) show that a direct seller of
information can increase profits or restrict the use of information by adding
noise, that is, selling slightly less precise information. In the case of severe
externality, an even more effective method to control information usage is
through an indirect sale rather than through a direct sale with added noise or
restricted subscribership because these inevitably still transmit some
information to those who observe market prices (Admati and Pfleiderer, 1990).
An indirect sale of information couples the sale of information with the sale of
securities, which has traditionally been practiced by brokers and dealers. If the
coupling of information with securities is not possible, specialized information
sellers have to rely on other methods to control the use of information by their
clients. In the past, financial intermediaries have produced, collected, and
disseminated the largest amount of information. However, their control over
information is waning as fast as the Internet is growing. Soon, individual
investors will have the same access to up-to-date and complete information as
only brokers used to have. An example is the online availability

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of the Securities Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis,
and Retrieval (EDGAR).
The Securities and Exchange Commission (http://www.sec.gov) requires
public companies to file information that it must make available to the public.
The SEC defines EDGAR (http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm), shown in figure
9.4, as a system that performs automated collection, validation, indexing,
acceptance, and forwarding of submissions by companies. Its purpose is to
increase the efficiency and to ensure the fairness of the securities market by
making time-sensitive corporate information available to investors. The type of
information found on EDGAR includes annual reports (Form 10K), quarterly
reports (Form 10Q), proxy statements (annual reports to shareholders) and
other reports voluntarily filed by companies. Since the SEC has phased in
electronic filing of required forms, retrieval and search by individuals has
become immediate, convenient, and cost-effective.
A question immediately arises: how can information sellers make profits when
investors have convenient access to primary sources of information? One way
is to focus on processing the information; that is, the information sellers filter
available information and present it in a form customers find useful. In the age
of information overload, the amount of information is no longer as important
as the effective filtering and selection of relevant information (see section 7.5
for information filtering).
The problem of externality remains, however. In general, the information
seller has to limit subscribership. Even with limited subscribership, the
window of opportunity for an information seller may be small because market
prices tend to reflect the information investors have and others who simply
observe prices can deduce the content of the information. In short, information
trading does not add much value when the information infrastructure and
market is as efficient as in electronic commerce. To control the use of
information and to extract the most surplus from consumers requires bundling
information services with other financial services, as shown in Chapter 8.
Page 394
Figure 9.4 EDGAR Online home page.
Certification and Assurance
Although information is clearly disseminated more efficiently in electronic

commerce, this efficiency does not increase the reliability of the information.
Unreliable information about borrowers and investment projects, even when
obtained efficiently, is still unreliable. The problem is compounded because of
the nature of digital communication, in which no established means of online
verification is available. Information provided on a web page may be as
reliable and authentic as it is bogus. Even establishing the identity of a seller or
a buyer requires an elaborate procedure. In the future, e-mail addresses may
become as easily identifiable as a postal address or a phone number, or online
transactions may be conducted via video phones with digitized driver's
licenses. Until then, temporary solutions are offered by new types of financial
intermediaries, called certification authorities, which are appearing to address
the verification problems peculiar to electronic commerce.
A certification authority (CA) is a public or private entity that issues digital
certificates to be used by sellers and buyers to authenticate identities and
messages, or to attest that a deed has occurred. In physical markets, checking
an ID or a signature is usually enough to establish identity and trust among
traders. However, in an electronic market, where face-to-face interactions are
Page 395
replaced by electronic messages, even the identity of an e-mail sender cannot
be easily verified. A CA, therefore, acts as a trusted third party who issues
digital IDs and other certificates that use strong encryption technologies to
prevent tampering (see the following sidebar, "Types of Digital Certificates").
Types of Digital Certificates
Froomkin (1997) identifies the following four types of certificates
likely to be issued by CAs:
Identifying Certificates Identifying certificates, or digital IDs,

attest to the identity of a person. A leading provider of digital IDs
is VeriSign, Inc. (http://www.verisign.com), a spin-off of the
encryption technology firm RSA Data Security, Inc.
(http://www.rsa.com). VeriSign offers different levels of digital
IDs, ranging from Class 1 identifying certificates, which verify
only the uniqueness of a name or e-mail address without
contacting the person, to Class 4 indentifying certificates, which
are issued after VeriSign investigates the person thoroughly and
personally.
Authorizing Certificates Whereas an identifying certificate

connects a person with a name, authorizing certificates verify
attributes of a person other than the identity. Such attributes may
include the age of a person, whether the person is a citizen of the
U.S. or belongs to a certain membership group, or whether the
person owns a car or other products. An example of using
authorizing certificates is when adult-only materials are sold to
those who present "over-18" certificates. Although the same goal
might be achieved via an identifying certificate, authorizing
certificates maintain the anonymity of the buyer.
Transactional Certificates Transactional certificates attest that a

certain fact or incident has occurred and been witnessed by the
attester. For example, when an e-mail is to be certified, a CA may
attached a digital signature verifying that the e-mail was indeed
sent by the person. This is most akin to the certification provided
by public notary services.
Time-Stamping Services If it is important to show not only that

something took place but also when, a time stamp can be added to
a document based on its hash value (see sidebar, "Cryptography
and Electronic Commerce"). By linking the unique hash value of
a document with a published hash value (for example, in The
New York Times), it can be verified not only whether the
document was modified but also when.
The reliability of digital certificates depends heavily on the strength of the
cryptographic technologies employed, which is why VeriSign is a natural
Page 396
extension of RSA Data Security's cryptographic business. In general, public
key encryption and digest function (see sidebar, "Cryptography and Electronic
Commerce") are two important technologies that enable digital signatures and
time stamping.
As far as identification is concerned, commercial certification services
may have a disadvantage compared to established businesses and government
agencies that are already engaged in some type of identification
function—issuing and assigning for Social Security, sales tax permits, driver's
licenses, postal addresses, phone numbers, and so on. After various ID systems
are digitized in a way to give these entities some advantage, private
certification services may focus on non-identification functions such as
transactional certificates and time stamping.
Cryptography and Electronic Commerce
An encrypted message is a plain-text document that is scrambled
to keep its contents secret. An encryption scheme scrambles the
text; a decryption scheme unscrambles an encrypted text.
Encryption schemes are typically based on mathematical
algorithms and keys. For example, suppose you replace every
letter in a document with the letter that comes three places after it
in the alphabet; for example, replace "A" with "D," "B" with "E,"
and so on. "Replacing with another letter" is your encryption
algorithm and the number "three" is your encryption key. Julius
Caesar reportedly first used this algorithm and key more than
2,000 years ago. The same encryption algorithm may have
different keys, for example, the key of "four" means that you
replace "A" with "E" instead of "D."
Encryption schemes can be divided into two classes: secret key

and public key. Secret key schemes depend on securing the
secrecy of the key used to encrypt and decrypt a message. There
are many problems with this scheme, the main one being if the
key is discovered. In this case, there is a key exchange problem
because new keys must be relayed securely every time keys are
changed. Public key schemes, on the other hand, use one key to
encrypt (a public key), which is published or given out freely, and
another to decrypt (a private key), which is kept secret. These two
keys are mathematically related to an encryption algorithm, and a
message encrypted by a public key must be decrypted by its
associated private key, and vice versa.
The public key system is quite simple to implement. Suppose

Alice and Bob want to communicate securely. Both publish their
public keys, keeping their private keys secret. When Alice wants
to send a secret message to Bob, she uses Bob's public key to
encrypt,

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----------- which only he can decrypt with his private key. To prove that the
message did indeed come from Alice, she can reverse the process
by encrypting her message using her private key. Bob can then
decrypt Alice's message using her public key and he knows that it
could have come from Alice and no one else. This latter example
captures the essence of how public key encryption can be used as
a digital signature.
Digital signatures can be used not only to identify the sender but
also to authenticate the content of a document when used with
digest functions. A digest function, also known as a one-way hash
value, is an arithmetic number that describes a document.
Suppose Alice adds up all the 1s in her digital document that
consists of 1s and 0s, and generates a certain value.
Mathematically, you can manipulate this number so as to make it
impossible to alter a document and come up with the same hash
value. Alice can then encrypt the hash value with her private key,
attach it to the document and send it to Bob. Bob can verify
whether the document was altered in transit by re-computing the
hash value of the document and comparing it with the encrypted
hash value. Encrypted hash values are used when it is
time-consuming and expensive to encrypt the whole message.
Instead, the encrypted hash value and signature can be transmitted
for verification purposes.
To authenticate not only the content of a document but the time it

was created, Alice may send the message via a trusted third party,
say Charlie, who adds a unique and essentially unforgettable time
stamp and digitally signs the document. The time stamp is based
on a number Charlie generates using several documents sent to
him for time stamping. For example, by adding the hash values of
two previous messages sent to him by people unknown to Alice,
all documents sent via Charlie have a unique time stamp that can
be verified by looking at Charlie's log of entries. To alter the time
stamp, you would first have to find the two previous messages.
Whether CAs provide reliable services will depend on how willingly their
certificates are accepted in the marketplace, because the information provided
by a certificate is as valid as the trustworthiness of the issuing CA. It is
understood that, prior to issuing a certificate, the CA investigates the subject in
question. But what happens when a person with a certificate issued by a CA
turns out to not be the person he claims to be? This question of CAs' or
certificate carriers' liability in such cases is just one of a number of legal issues
being researched and developed. As Froomkin (1997) argues, a certificate can
be considered either as representing an investigative service or simply a
document—a good—or both. Depending on the interpretation, different sets of
commercial liability laws apply.
Page 398
Two basic systems can be developed to implement the requisite network of
trust needed for certification schemes: a hierarchical structure of certifying
authorities, and a market-oriented trust infrastructure. In the hierarchical
model, one CA is certified by another CA, and so on. This system may
ultimately be backed by trusted government agencies or public corporations.
One drawback is that its structure can be unnecessarily complex without a
clear delineation of responsibility, not to mention redundancy (see Rivest and
Lampson, 1996 for decentralized scheme). In a market-oriented trust
infrastructure, on the other hand, the acceptability of a CA depends on its
market reputation among consumers. Already, a healthy competition among
established industry players is beginning to emerge. In addition to VeriSign,
the U.S. Postal Service plans to begin stamping e-mail, digitally signing it and
delivering it on the Internet at a cost of 22 cents for a document of 50 KB or
less. They also will offer a wide variety of authentication and verification
functions for e-mail that are currently standards for conventional mail service.
In comparison to certification authorities, assurance services are concerned
with not only the information's authenticity but also its relevancy. Information
technology has brought a seemingly unlimited amount of information to
consumers—as the popular press describes it, the age of "information
overload." As a consequence, the burden of processing information shifts from
the seller to the buyer, who must analyze and select the information relevant to
his decision making. Therefore, improving the quality of information means
not only searching and retrieving relevant information but also processing and
selecting this information based on information profiles or a user's
predetermined needs. Such tasks this can be achieved through the use of
intelligent software agents or human intermediaries (see section 7.5 for
software agents). An intermediary or a business that deals with processing
information is called an assurance service provider.
One example of assurance service geared toward analyzing and improving the
quality of information is the effort by the American Institute of Certified
Public Accountants (AICPA). AICPA defines its new area of assurance
services as:
Page 399
"CPA services that improve the quality of information or its context for
decision-makers through the application of independent professional
judgment."
This may entail the development of intelligent agents or computer programs
using existing decision-making algorithms or engaging in contractual and
consulting services to design and train software agents, assess the quality of
information, and interpret and summarize information for clients. In both
cases, the subject is no longer the amount of accessible information but the
quality and the level of usefulness of increasingly overloaded information.
Whether human-oriented assurance services or computer-based intelligent
agents will dominate information-processing markets is anybody's guess. But
the complexity of analyzing data may favor specialized and flexible human
intermediaries.
9.5. Summary
Of all the functions financial intermediaries perform—transactional,
transformational, and informational—transactional functions relating to
market-making activities will be affected most by the emerging computerized
markets. This will occur as increasingly more efficient processes of finding
opportunities to trade and matching buyers and sellers are demanded. On the
other hand, transformational functions will be the least affected by the
increasing use of the Internet for trading capital assets. The need for product
transformation will persist separate from the revolutionary changes in how
transactions are organized. As such, existing financial institutions have a
tremendous advantage in terms of experience and expertise over newer entries
in electronic commerce. However, it is not clear how existing intermediaries
will adapt their services and products to maximize this advantage.

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As transactional functions undergo substantial changes with the advent of
automated exchange markets, financial intermediaries may specialize in
informational functions to maximize their comparative advantage in information
acquisition and analysis. Examples of information intermediaries who deal only
with the qualitative aspects of information are financial certification authorities and
assurance services. These Internet-native intermediaries pose a new threat to
existing financial institutions by specializing in certain aspects of the market.
Nevertheless, an information seller still needs to combine his expertise in
information with transactional aspects of the market. Otherwise, the value accruing
to the intermediary will decrease as the information market becomes more efficient
and the profit-making margin shrinks. Selling capital market information, therefore,
is often optimized when the information is combined with the assets (for example, a
stock portfolio), whereby the information is sold only indirectly. In a way, this
indirect sale of information affords intermediaries more market power, and
discourages them from specializing in only one type of service in financial services.
One economic function of a financial intermediary—its allocative efficiency—has
not received much attention. An intermediary as a market institution is traditionally
evaluated in terms of transaction costs. In that sense, the predominant concern in
"virtual" financial services has been that of controlling and reducing operating
costs. Allocative efficiency, on the other hand, deals with whether available
financial assets are distributed or allocated adequately based on the risk and
financial potential of borrowers' projects. When the market is inefficient, credit
rationing, that is, allocating funds without regard to the profitability of each project,
is observed (Stiglitz and Weiss, 1981). While the effect of network technology on
operational efficiency is an important factor in assessing the profitability of online
financial services, it is still unknown how online financial intermediaries will affect
the way financial resources are allocated. This may well be a future direction of
economic studies.
Page 401
References
Admati, A.R., and P. Pfleiderer, 1986. "A Monopolistic Market for Information."
Journal of Economic Theory, 39: 400_438.
"Direct and Indirect Sale of Information." 1990. Econometrica, 58(4): 901_928.
AICPA, 1995. Report by AICPA Special Committee on Assurance Services.
Boyd, J.H., and E.C. Prescott, 1986. "Financial Intermediary-Coalitions." Journal of
Economic Theory, 38: 211_232.
Diamond, D., 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring." Review
of Economic Studies, 51: 393_414.
Froomkin, A.M., 1997. "The Essential Role of Trusted Third Parties in Electronic
Commerce." In Kalakota, R., and A. Whinston, eds., Readings in Electronic
Commerce. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Kalakota, R., and A. Whinston, 1997. Electronic Commerce: A Manager's Guide.
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Morgenson, G. 1996. One Day Soon the Music's Going to Stop. Available at http://
www.inetcapital.com/ music2.htm.
Rivest, R.L., and B. Lampson, 1996. SDSI—A Simple Distributed Security
Infrastructure. Available at http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/sdsi10.html.
Rubinstein, A., and A. Wolinsky, 1987. "Middlemen." Quarterly Journal of

Economics, 102: 581_593.
Stiglitz, J., and A. Weiss, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect
Information." American Economic Review, 70: 393_410.
Page 402
Williamson, S.D., 1987. "Recent Developments in Modeling Financial
Intermediation." Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Quarterly Review, Summer
1987.

Financial Intermediation and Credit Rationing
In addition to Boyd and Prescott, 1986, and Williamson, S.D., 1987:

Blinder, A., and J. Stiglitz, 1983. "Money, Credit Constraints, and Economic
Activity." American Economic Review, May.
Campbell, T., and W. Kracaw, 1980. "Information Production, Market Signalling
and the Theory of Financial Intermediation." Journal of Finance, 35: 863_881.
Jaffe, D., and R. Russell, 1966. "Imperfect Information, Uncertainty and Credit
Rationing." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 90: 651_666.
Williamson, S.D. 1986. "Costly Monitoring, Financial Intermediation, and
Equilibrium Credit Rationing." Journal of Monetary Economics, 18: 159_179. This
paper shows that credit rationing may result even with a model that is primarily
geared to explain why intermediaries arise. In Boyd and Prescott, credit is not
rationed.
Page 403
Internet Resources
Electronic Banking Resource Center
http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/~richards
Encryption Technologies
David G. Post, 1994. "Encryption—It's Not Just for Spies Anymore." American
Lawyer, December 1994. Available at http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/
David_Post/ crypto_not_just_spies_post.article.
Tatu Ylonen. "Introduction to Cryptography." Available at
http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh/crypto/ intro.html.
Cryptography FAQ posted to sci.crypt and talk.politics.crypto newsgroups can be

found at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/ cryptography-faq.
Cypherpunks is a mailing list discussing cryptography and its implementation on

the Internet. To subscribe, send e-mail to: [email protected] with one line of
text that reads: subscribe cypherpunks your_email_address.
ACM's cryptography page is at http://www.acm.org/usacm/crypto.html.
Pretty Good Privacy by Phil Zimmerman at http://www.pgp.com
MIT's PGP version 2.6 FAQ at http://web.mit.edu/afs/net/mit/jis/www/pgpfaq.html
Internet Privacy Coalition's crypto resources page:

http://www.privacy.org/ipc/#Resources.
Page 404
White House's white paper on key escrow policy calling for international key
escrow systems is archived at EPIC, available at
http://www.epic.org/crypto/key_escrow/white_paper.html.
Financial Services on the Internet
A good place to start is Yahoo!'s subject listing:

http:// www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/ Companies/ Financial_Services.
Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC; http://www.fstc.org)

is a non-profit consortium of financial service companies and research
organizations.
Online trading services in addition to e.schwab and E*Trade mentioned in the text:
● eBroker (http://www.ebroker.com)
● Lombard Institutional Brokerage (http://www.lombard.com)

● National Discount Brokers (http://pawwws.secapl.com/Broker/Ndb)
● Net Investor (http://pawwws.com/tni)
● K. Aufhauser & Company (http://www.aufhauser.com)
Digital Signature and Certification Services
Legislations dealing with certification authorities and digital signature:

● Georgia Digital Signature Act, 1997, draft, at
http://www.efga.org/digsig/lawdraft.htm
Florida's Digital Signature Advisory Committee report regarding
amendments to the Electronic Signature Act of 1996 at
http://www.dos.state.fl.us/digsig/finalreport.html
Page 405
● California Digital Signature Act, 1995, at
http://www.gcwf.com/articles\digsig.htm
● Utah Digital Signature Act, 1995,
http://www.jmls.edu/cyber/statutes/udsa.html. For analysis, see Bender, N.S.,
1995, Digital Commerce and the Utah Digital Signature Act, available at
http://www.library. law.miami.edu/~bender/internt.html
● The American Bar Association's Digital Signature Guidelines, 1995, is
available at
http://www.law.vill.edu/vls/student_home/courses/computer-law/abaguid.htm
or contact ABA's site at http://www. abanet.org/scitech/ec/home.html
● An analysis of the Digital Signature Standards, developed by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology in 1994 and adopted as the federal
standards for authenticating digital documents, is available at
http://www.epic.org/crypto/dss/new_nist_nsa_revelations.html
Carl Ellision, 1996, Establishing Identity Without Certification Authorities.
Available at http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/usenix.html

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CHAPTER 10
Electronic Payment Systems

For electronic commerce to have a chance to meet the soaring expectations set
in the press with regards to the Internet, efficient and effective payment
services need to be established and accepted by businesses and consumers
alike. Recognizing this, virtually all interested parties in academia,
governments, and financial services are exploring various types of payment
services and the issues surrounding electronic payment systems and digital
currency. Some proposed electronic payment systems are simply electronic
versions of existing payment systems, such as checks and credit cards, whereas
others are based on digital currency technology and have the potential for
definitive impact on today's financial and monetary systems. While the popular
press and developers of payment systems predict fundamental changes in the
financial sector because of innovations in electronic payment, Alan Greenspan,
chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System, recently
reiterated the general sentiment among monetary officials, that "electronic
money is likely to spread only gradually and play a much smaller role in our
economy than private currency did historically" (Greenspan, 1996).
This chapter reviews and categorizes major types of electronic payment
systems, investigates the economic and financial roles these innovations play,
and finally, examines their impact on existing financial and monetary systems.
Page 408
After the overview, section 10.2 discusses payment clearing services based on
an intermediary, followed by section 10.3 on notational funds transfers such as
digital checks and credit cards. Of particular importance and interest are digital
currency products. These, in effect, are digital products that can be sold and
bought in the marketplace, which determines their value, usefulness and
profitability. As tradable products, they will also be subject to product
differentiation and the problem of quality uncertainty, as discussed in previous
chapters. Sections 10.4 and 10.5 examine digital currency products in detail.
This chapter concludes by evaluating the effects of online payment systems on
the financial service sector, the economy, the monetary system and
government policies.
10.1. Electronic Payment Systems: An Overview

Electronic payment systems can be considered merely the next—albeit
significant—step in a long line of changes in payment clearing systems. The
electronic settling of accounts, for example, has long been an integral part of
payment systems using credit cards, debit cards, automatic teller machines,
and prepaid cards. What enables any payment mechanism to be processed
electronically is the fact that unlike currency, bills, or coins that carry
monetary values, non-cash mechanisms are promises or contracts of payments.
Based on the information transmitted following a transaction, the appropriate
accounts representing notational money are adjusted between banks and
financial institutions. Checks are a primary example in which an intrinsically
worthless piece of paper, which nonetheless conveys important information, is
exchanged for settlement.
Payment Patterns
Today, electronic payment systems account for a very small number of

payments made in the United States. According to the Federal Reserve Bank
of
Page 409
St. Louis (1995), about 80 percent of all retail purchases are paid for by cash in
the U.S. And 96 percent of all business-to-business transactions are completed
using paper checks. Despite these impressive numbers, in terms of total value,
payments via cash and checks account for only a small portion of total
financial transactions. Although no hard data on cash transactions exists, table
10.1 shows a summary in terms of total volume (number of transactions) and
total value (dollar amount) of other payment methods used in 1995 by
businesses. Although electronic payment systems were used in less than 5
percent of the transactions, they covered almost 88 percent of the total
transactional value.
Of the non-check electronic payment methods, Fedwire of the Federal Reserve
and Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS) of the New York
Clearing House are primarily used for large-value transactions. Banks use
Fedwire to clear end-of-the-day accounts, whereas businesses use CHIPS
transfers to settle large domestic payments and foreign exchange transactions.
Transfers based on the Automated Clearing House (ACH) are conducted via
value-added private networks (VPNs) without the involvement of the Federal
Reserve. ACHs are set up to automate payments for goods and services
between corporations and their suppliers. Accordingly, ACH payments are
relatively high-volume but low-value transactions compared to Fedwire or
CHIPS.
Table 10.1 Non-Cash Payments in the U.S. (1995)
Volume (%) in Millions Value (%) in Trillions
Type of Payment of Transactions of Dollars
Checks 59,400.0 (96.3%) 68.3 (12.5%)
Fedwire 69.7 (.1%) 207.6 (37.9%)
CHIPS 42.4 (.1%) 262.3 (47.9%)
ACH 2,200.0 (3.5%) 9.3 (1.7%)
Page 410
Total 61,712.1 547.5
Source: Knudson, et al. (1994).

Even after decades of using electronic payment systems such as ACH, the
frequency with which paper checks are still used for payment in the U.S. is
surprising: 200 million checks a day! Checks continue to reign supreme not
only because of entrenched habits. Another reason is that individuals and
businesses can generate interest while checks are being cleared, which
normally takes several days. This delay in check-clearing is called float, and is
an important factor in business financial calculations. For example, General
Motors Corporation persuaded its suppliers to accept a three-day delay in their
electronic payments, even though payments can be made instantly, because it
normally took 3.6 days for checks to clear. This example strongly suggests that
a choice of payment method is influenced by factors other than simple
convenience or lower transaction costs.
Types of Electronic Payment Systems
Electronic commerce, especially that involving consumers and digital

products, places stringent demands on a payment system. Electronic commerce
payment systems must be convenient for web purchasing, transportable over
the network, strong enough to thwart electronic interference, and cost-effective
for extremely low-value transactions. Despite this impressive set of
requirements, more than two dozen Internet payment standards or protocols
have been proposed. These range from Anonymous Internet Mercantile
Protocols by AT&T Bell Labs (http://www.bell-labscom) to Conditional
Access for Europe (CAFE) for the European community, to Secure Electronic
Transaction (SET) promoted by MasterCard (http://www.mastercard.com) and
Visa (http://www.visa.com). Many software and hardware products based on
these open standards are being offered, including CyberCash, DigiCash,
Mondex, NetBill and NetCheque. The diversity of these products indicates a
healthy competition, but confuses ordinary Internet users and merchants trying
to choose an appropriate payment

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mechanism. To structure the following discussion of types, this chapter
broadly classifies all electronic payment systems into three groups: payment
through an intermediary, payment based on Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)
and payment based on electronic currency.
Conventional Payment Process
A conventional process of payment and settlement involves a buyer-to-seller

transfer of cash or payment information (for example, credit card or check).
The settlement of payment takes place in the financial processing network. A
cash payment requires a buyer's withdrawal from his bank account, a transfer
of cash to the seller, and the seller's deposit of the payment to his account.
Non-cash payment mechanisms are settled by adjusting, that is, crediting and
debiting, the appropriate accounts between banks based on payment
information conveyed via check or credit card.
Figure 10.1 is a simplified diagram for both cash and non-cash transactions.
Cash moves from the buyer's bank to the seller's bank through face-to-face
exchanges in the market. If a buyer uses a non-cash method of payment,
payment information instead of cash flows from the buyer to the seller, and
ultimately payments are settled between affected banks who notationally
adjust accounts based on the payment information. In real markets, this
clearing process involves intermediaries, such as credit card services or check
clearing companies. Schematically, then, most payment systems are based on
similar processes. The information conveyed to settle payments can be one of
the following:
● Information about the identities of the seller and the buyer, and some
instruction to settle payments without revealing financial information
(payment clearing systems, discussed in section 10.2, "Payment
Clearing Services")
● Financial information, such as credit card or bank account numbers
Page 412
(including checks and debit cards) (notational funds transfer, discussed

in section 10.3, "Notational Funds Transfer")
● Actual values represented by digital currency (digital currency payment
systems, discussed in sections 10.4, "Digital Currency Payment
Systems," and 10.5, "Properties and Specifications of Digital
Currencies")
Figure 10.1 A simplified model of transaction.

When face-to-face purchase is replaced with online commerce, many aspects
of a transaction occur instantly, under which various processes of a normal
business interaction are subsumed. For example, a typical purchase involves
stages of locating a seller, selecting a product, asking a price quote, making an
offer, agreeing over payment means, checking the identity and validity of the
payment mechanism, and transferring goods and receipts. To
Page 413
be used as a substitute for face-to-face payments, online payment systems must
incorporate all or some of these stages within their payment functions.
The lack of face-to-face interaction also leads to the development of more
secure methods of payment for electronic commerce, to deal with the security
problems for sensitive information and uncertainty about identity.
Consequently, electronic commerce transactions require intermediaries to
provide security, identification, and authentication, as well as payment
support.
Figure 10.2 shows a stylized transaction for online commerce using an
intermediary. In this model, the intermediary not only settles payments, but
also takes care of such needs as confirming seller and buyer identities,
authenticating and verifying ordering and payment information, and other
transactional requirements lacking in virtual interactions. In the figure, two
boxes delineate online purchasing and secure or offline payment clearing
processes. Payment settlement in this figure follows the example of the
traditional EFT model, which uses secured private value-added networks. The
intermediary contributes to market efficiency by resolving uncertainties about
security and identity and relieving vendors of the need to set up duplicative
hardware and software to handle the online payment clearing process.
Payment information transmitted by the buyer may be one of three types. First,
it may contain only customer order information, such as the identity of the
buyer and seller, name of the product, amount of payment, and other sale
conditions—but no payment information, such as credit card numbers or
checking account numbers. In this case, the intermediary acts as a centralized
commerce enabler, maintaining membership and payment information for
sellers and buyers. A buyer need only send the seller his identification number
assigned by the intermediary. Upon receiving the purchase order, the
intermediary verifies it with the buyer and seller and handles all sensitive
payment information on behalf of both. This is the electronic commerce
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model followed by First Virtual Holdings, Inc. (http://www.fv.com).
The key benefit of this payment clearing system is that it separates sensitive
and non-sensitive information, and only non-sensitive information is
exchanged online. This alleviates security concerns often seen as a serious
barrier to online commerce. First Virtual does not even rely on encryption for
messages between buyers and sellers. A critical requisite for this system to
work is the users' trust in the intermediaries.
Figure 10.2 Transactions with an intermediary.
The second type of payment system does not depend on a central processing
intermediary. Instead, sensitive payment information (such as a credit card or
bank account number) is transmitted along with orders. This is, in effect, an
open Internet implementation of financial electronic data interchange (EDI)
(see fig. 10.3). An electronic funds transfer (EFT) is a financial application of
EDI, which sends credit card numbers or electronic checks via secured private
networks between banks and major corporations. To use EFTs to clear
payments and settle accounts, an online payment service will need to
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add capabilities to process orders, accounts and receipts. In its simplest form,
payment system may use digital checks—simply images of checks—and rely
on existing payment clearing networks. The Secure Electronic Transaction
(SET) protocol—a credit card-based system supported by Visa and
MasterCard—uses digital certificates, which are digital credit cards. This type
of payment system is called a notational funds transfer system because it
resembles traditional electronic fund transfers and wire transfers, which settle
notational accounts of buyers and sellers.
Notational funds transfer systems differ from payment-clearing services in that
the payment information transferred online contains sensitive financial
information. Thus, if a third party intercepts the sensitive information, it may
be abused like stolen credit cards or debit cards. A majority of proposed

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electronic payment systems fall into this second type of payment system. The
objective of these systems is to extend the benefit and convenience of EFT to
consumers and small businesses. However, unlike EFTs, the Internet is open
and not as secure as private value-added networks (VANs). The challenge to
these systems is how to secure the integrity of the payment messages being
transmitted and to ensure the interoperability between different sets of
payment protocols.
Figure 10.3 Notational Funds Transfer system.
The third type of payment system does not transmit payment information but a
digital product representing values: electronic currency. The nature of digital
currency mirrors that of paper money as a means of payment. As such, digital
currency payment systems have the same advantages as paper currency
payment, namely anonymity and convenience. As in other electronic payment
systems, security during transmission and storage is a concern, although from
a different perspective. For digital currency systems, double-spending,
counterfeiting, and storage become critical issues, whereas for notational funds
transfers, eavesdropping and liability (when charges are made without
authorization) are important concerns. Figure 10.4 shows a digital currency
payment scheme.
The only difference from the figure is that the intermediary in figure 10.4 acts
as an electronic bank that converts outside money (for example, U.S. currency)
into inside money (for example, tokens or Ecash), which is circulated within
online markets. However, as a private monetary system, digital currency will
have a wide-ranging impact on money and monetary systems with implications
extending far beyond mere transactional efficiency. Digital currency already
has spawned many types of new businesses: software vendors for currency
server systems; hardware vendors for smart-card readers and
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other interface devices; technology firms for security, encryption and
authentication; and new banking services interfacing accounts in digital
currency and conventional currency, for example, Mark Twain Bank
(http://www.marktwain.com). Many of these new players navigate through
areas uncharted by researchers and government policymakers. Old maps used
to inscribe unknown territories with "Here Be Dragons," a cartographic term
for uncertainty. What kinds of dangerous, as well as fascinating, "dragons" we
will encounter in this new world of electronic payments is the subject of the
remaining sections.
Figure 10.4 Digital currency payment system.
10.2. Payment Clearing Services

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Payment clearing services (PCSs), as discussed earlier, handle only
instructions to settle payments and are organized around a trusted third party
(TTP). Sellers and buyers open an account with a TTP, which issues
identification numbers to account holders. A TTP may either simply establish
an online payment clearing relationship with members' chosen banks or may
require members to transfer money into TTP accounts. In both cases, the
financial information needed to establish membership is transmitted and
verified via secured channels, such as offline, or by encrypted messages. After
the accounts are established, members only need to exchange identification
numbers and purchase details such as product specifications, prices, and other
sales terms, omitting all sensitive financial information. Actual payment
clearing is done by the TTP, which intermediates members' accounts in one or
more banks through secured, private channels. By setting up a proper protocol,
a TTP can incorporate in its service not only ordering but also marketing, sales
negotiation, delivery, inventory, and receipt and account management.
Because sensitive financial information is never transmitted online in a
payment clearing service system, the insecurity of the Internet is not a concern.
The critical issue in using a PCS as an electronic commerce payment method
is the trustworthiness of a TTP. A TTP acts like a firewall that maintains the
integrity of the payment and sometimes the whole commerce system. Thus, if
the firewall breaks down, the whole system's security is compromised. The
concern in this case is if financial information, as well as consumer purchasing
information, is collected by this centralized entity which may breach the
confidential nature of business transactions if not handled with restraint,
The advantage of a PCS, especially for small vendors and consumers, is that it
offers a secure commerce environment without heavy investment in security
technologies and hardware. Transactions can be as open as possible, which fits
the Internet culture.
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First Virtual Holdings (http://www.fv.com), shown in figure 10.5, is an
example of a TTP that does not even use encryption for its messages. First
Virtual instead relies on an architecture that separates sensitive information,
such as members' bank and credit card numbers, from everyday commercial
transactions. First Virtual created its Internet Payment System based on three
working assumptions. First, it only deals with information products, that is,
digital products that can be delivered via the network. One characteristic of
digital products is reproducibility, which eliminates the need for warehousing
multiple copies. Therefore, instead of being a distributor, First Virtual acts as a
market maker. Also, unlike physical products, unwanted digital products
can be destroyed at a minimum material cost to a vendor. Second, First Virtual

offers consumers an opportunity to browse or try out digital products prior to
purchase. Payments are made only if consumers deem the products
worthwhile. Again, this is soundly based on the characteristics of digital
products, especially the difficulty to convey or verify quality, as discussed in
Chapter 4. Third, First Virtual offers an inexpensive way to handle a costly
payment network (see sidebar, "How the First Virtual Payment System
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Works"). By eliminating the need for costly software and hardware to secure
online transactions, this model substantially reduces costs and enables any firm
or consumer to engage in electronic commerce today instead of tomorrow.
Figure 10.5 First Virtual home page.
A similar payment architecture is proposed by NetBill
(http://www.ini.cmu.edu:80/ netbill), which was developed as part of Carnegie
Mellon's graduate program in Information Networking. As in the First Virtual
model, buyers and sellers open NetBill accounts with a server that maintains
all sensitive information and clears payments with merchants' and customers'
banks.
How the First Virtual Payment System Works
Using the First Virtual (FV) payment systems consists of the
following steps (shown in figure 10.6):
(1) Alice acquires an account number by filling out a registration

form, which gives FV a customer profile and establishes an
account backed by a traditional financial instrument, such as her
credit card. Bob, the merchant, also goes through the same
process.
(2) To purchase an article, product, or other information offered

by Bob (who displays the FV logo at his web store), Alice
requests the item from Bob, sending her FV account number. The
purchase can be automated by authorizing Bob to access her FV
account and bill her via browser settings, or she can type in her
account information.
(3) Bob sends the requested file directly to Alice.
(4) After sending the product, Bob contacts the FV payment

server to verify Alice's account number and request for payment.

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(5) The FV payment server verifies Alice's account number for the vendor and checks for sufficient funds.
(6) The FV payment server sends an electronic message to Alice. This message could be an automatic World
Wide Web form, or a simple e-mail.
(7) Alice responds to the form or e-mail in one of three ways: Yes, I agree to pay; No, I will not pay; or Fraud, I
never asked for this. A "No" response can be used by FV's members if the downloaded file is not what they
expected.
(8) If the FV payment server receives a "Yes" from Alice, Bob's account is credited by FV, and Alice's account is
debited. If the answer is "No," no further action is taken.
(9) If FV receives no response from Alice, it tries to contact her again. But, after a certain number of tries, FV
may cancel her account because FV requires members to check e-mail regularly. If a member always responds
"No," FV also may discontinue the account.
Figure 10.6 First Virtual payment clearing process.
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10.3. Notational Funds Transfer
Although payment clearing services have decided advantages for registered members, these advantages cannot be transferred
to non-members. To transact with non-members, online shoppers and merchants may have to rely on traditional payment
methods, such as checks and credit cards, which are accepted as payment by almost all vendors. Using one of these payment
methods requires buyers to send their account or credit card information to sellers, who forward it to an intermediary or a
currency server, which verifies the information and relays it to the affected financial institutions. The banks, in turn, adjust the
users' notational accounts. Thus, you call this system a notational funds transfer system (NFT).
Any Internet payment system that is check- or credit card-based is an example of an NFT. The Interbank Check Imaging (ICI)
system (http://www.fstc.org/projects/imaging), developed by the Financial Services Technology Consortium [FSTC
(http://www.fstc.org)], is a direct application of imaging and network technologies to a financial payment system. Whether an
image of a check is transmitted or credit card numbers are merely exchanged, NFT systems are the most prevalent payment
mechanisms for Internet commerce simply because they represent a natural extension of the existing electronic funds transfer
(EFT) system.
As in payment clearing systems, an NFT system still involves an intermediary. The intermediary's role in this case is limited to
serving as a conduit of messages between the open Internet and closed financial networks. For example, CyberCash's payment
system (http://www.cybercash.com), another implementation of an NFT, uses CyberCash servers to authorize transactions
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and forward payment information to banks and processing houses. At the shopper's computer, a software program called
CyberCash Internet Wallet contains the shopper's credit card information (see fig. 10.7), which is forwarded to merchants and
then to a CyberCash server that handles payment clearing with banks (see sidebar: How CyberCash Works). Online shoppers
interact with the CyberCash server via a merchant CyberCash server, which transmits the information using public key
encryption. Because credit card information is already encrypted at the shopper's computer, merchants can only verify its
validity without discovering this sensitive information. In this model, more important than the trust issue, is the concern when
security as private information is being transmitted. CyberCash relies on both public key and secret key encryption
technologies to secure its messages (see section 9.4 for encryption technologies).
Figure 10.7 CyberCash Internet Wallet keeps user's credit card information.
continues
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continued
How CyberCash Works
CyberCash transactions are completed through three software programs: one program resides on the consumer's
PC (CyberCash Internet Wallet), one operates as part of the merchant server, and one operates within the
CyberCash servers. Before shopping with CyberCash, consumers download the CyberCash Wallet program,
which is available free from CyberCash (http://www.cybercash.com). Because CyberCash Wallet is a separate
piece of software, consumers can use any type of credit card. A CyberCash payment process, depicted in figure
10.8, works in the following manner:
(1) The consumer selects items for purchase and fills out the merchant's order form, complete with necessary
shipping information.
(2) When the shopper chooses to pay with CyberCash, the merchant server presents an invoice to the consumer
and requests payment, sending a special message to the consumer's CyberCash Wallet. The consumer simply
chooses which credit card to pay with and clicks it.
(3) CyberCash Wallet sends the credit card information to the merchant server.
(4) The merchant server verifies the validity and integrity of the received message, that is, checks whether it was
tampered with, and sends the message to a CyberCash
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server.
(5) The CyberCash server is linked to a credit card payment network, through which accounts are settled by
conventional processes.
(6) The payment settlement result is forwarded to the CyberCash server.
(7) The merchant server is notified of the transaction result.
(8) The merchant sends the ordered items with a receipt to the shopper.
Figure 10.8 CyberCash payment clearing process.
As evident from the way CyberCash works, an NFT is an extension of traditional credit card-based transaction systems in
which established players may have market advantages. To support the increasing use of credit card payments on the open
Internet, Visa (http://www.visa.com) and MasterCard proposed in 1996 a protocol to ensure interoperability across different
hardware platforms and web browsers. This protocol, named Secure Electronic Transaction (SET), is supported by Microsoft,
Netscape, IBM, GTE, VeriSign and other major players in electronic commerce. Besides offering standard communication
protocols and message formats for credit card-based transactions, SET provides confidentiality through encryption, message
integrity using digital signatures, and authentication of consumer and merchant identities (see sidebar, "How SET is Set to
Launch Credit Card Use in Cyberspace").
How SET is Set to Launch Credit Card Use in Cyberspace
Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) is an open specification developed jointly by Visa and MasterCard to secure
credit card transactions over the Internet. SET relies on digital certificates issued to consumers; the certificates
contain credit card information that is verified by credit card issuers through a certification authority. The
document stating that a card is valid is secured by public key encryption and the issuing bank attaches its digital
signature to the certificate. After consumers receive the certificates, they store them in their personal computers,
and send them to merchants when making purchases on the Internet. Merchants also resister with their

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----------- banks, who issue digital certificates to be displayed on their web
pages.
During a transaction, consumers send the merchant their digital

certificates for payment. In a sense, the digital certificate is a
digital credit card, which merchants simply pass on to their banks
for approval. The merchant certificate is equivalent to the logos of
accepted cards displayed in store windows. For more information,
see "Internet Resources" at the end of this chapter.
The dominant issue today in electronic commerce is security. The level of
interest indicates that most merchants and other participants in Internet
commerce are considering electronic payment systems based on traditional
systems such as NFTs. This is despite the fact that First Virtual's payment
system is much more secure, even without encryption technology, and does
not require heavy investment or costs for merchants to participate. The fact
that NFT payment systems simply extend the existing model of physical
markets seems to suit vendors who sell physical products on the Internet,
especially because consumers seem to prefer extended credit terms to cash
payments. This said, even with greatly reduced transaction costs, credit
card-based payments still are not suitable for small-value purchases. In these
instances, digital currency payment systems have the advantage.
10.4. Digital Currency Payment Systems

Whereas electronic payment systems reviewed in the previous sections aim to
adapt existing payment settlement processes to the open environment of the
Internet, digital currency, also called electronic cash or electronic money, is a
new development which has far-reaching commercial, monetary, and
regulatory ramifications. One of the ways payment systems using digital
currency differ from traditional electronic funds transfers is the transactional
contents. In traditional EFT and many electronic payment systems proposed
for Internet commerce, sensitive payment information (such as credit card
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numbers or bank account information) is transmitted over the network. For
those transactions, the primary concern of businesses and consumers is
security. When security is breached, this information may be used without
authorization. But, swift counter-measures can remedy the situation. In the
case of digital currency, the monetary value is being transferred instead of
payment information. This is akin to sending a $20 bill in the mail. An
intercepted digital currency transaction, therefore, is equivalent to outright
theft, and the remedial measures needed are different from those addressing
credit card fraud.
The primary motivation for digital currencies has been to preserve the privacy
afforded by cash transactions. Privacy can be protected somewhat in non-cash
payment systems by various encryption methods and trusted third parties. A
more salient feature of digital cash as a payment system is the capability to
make peer-to-peer transactions, either online or offline, in which two persons
can exchange money without involving a third party. In this sense, digital
currency is more than just an efficient electronic payment system; it is a
monetary innovation that deserves closer economic analysis.
Money as a Medium of Exchange
Money has many origins and forms, but to be a viable medium of exchange, a
monetary system must meet certain criteria. Primitive forms of money include
virtually every type of goods with value, such as cash crops, cattle, and
ornamental and precious objects. These objects are used to pay tributes, make
peace offerings, compensate a bride's family, and fulfill other social customs.
While these primitive forms of money could be used as a store of value and a
means of payment, to act as a medium of exchange they need to be widely
available and broadly accepted, as well as convenient. Monetary objects may
have different uses, but an economic use of money as an exchange medium
needs to simplify the cumbersome barter system of physical goods.
Coins or paper currency—also called fiat money—meet the criteria of
acceptability, availability, and convenience as a medium of exchange. Precious
metals, struck as coins, were commonly used as money until the 19th century.
Page 428
On the other hand, the origin of paper money goes back only to the late Middle
Ages, when bank credits were transferred in the form of bills of credit, whose
value depended on the issuer's credit worthiness. Until quite recently, paper
money was issued by private banks as well as government agencies. In
Canada, private banks were free to issue notes based on their assets until the
beginning of this century. Even in the U.S., no national banking or currency
system existed during the free-banking era prior to the Civil War. Although
they were ultimately backed by government bonds, National Bank Notes had
been issued by federally chartered national banks since 1863 under the
National Bank Act. The National Bank Notes competed with Demand Notes
(also known as the "greenbacks") and Legal Tender Notes (also known as
United States Notes), both issued by the federal government. The Federal
Reserve Act of 1913 phased out these privately issued notes and replaced them
with Federal Reserve Notes by the late 1930s, but privately issued currency
had been common in the history of U.S. money.
As the use of fiat money grew, it became possible to separate the role of
exchange medium from the role of storing value. Paper currency does not have
an intrinsic value other than the promise by the issuing bank or government to
convert it into another form of stored value on demand. Ultimately, not even
this convertibility is promised, and the value of paper money depends solely
on the implicit trust among the public and between the public and the authority
who issues the currency.
Inside Money and Outside Money
The amount of currency circulated today is quite small compared to the

amount of money that exists in demand deposit and savings accounts. Even
items of small value are purchased using debit cards and other electronic
devices, further reducing the need to withdraw and carry bills and coins.
Whereas coins and bills are exchanged physically to complete transactions,
notational money in currency-denominated accounts is simply adjusted
according to instructions given by affected parties. As the public's trust in
financial institutions grows, the money that exists in notation can be con-

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verted into another form to address the needs of a market. When linked to a
currency, called outside money, the new form of money is known as inside
money because it is accepted within a certain market.
To be fully considered inside money, these instruments must be convertible
into dollars, that is, redeemable for cash, accepted for various products, and
transferable to other users for payment. Many forms of inside money already
are in use: transit coupons and tokens, casino chips, stadium cards and prepaid
telephone and copy cards. Inside money is circulated among those who trust
and accept it, and the ultimate value of such a currency is in its capability to be
converted to outside money.
The distinction between inside and outside monies is one of territory, in terms
of transactional activities. Inside money is circulated within the territory of the
money—that is, for the purposes specified by the money or for activities in
which that money is recognized and accepted as payment—but cannot be used
outside unless it is converted into outside money. Usually, outside money can
be used for inside-money transactions, but for reasons such as convenience,
inside money may be preferred. Inside money—for example, subway tokens,
video game tokens, and paper money for amusement park rides—is created
and used mainly for convenience, and as long as parity is maintained between
inside and outside money, inside money remains as tokens. These tokens often
don't circulate among users and have limited acceptability.
But certainly, any token may be transferred or traded among its holders and
accepted by a large number of merchants. When these tokens are used for
almost all payment and exchange needs, what is the difference from outside
money? In other words, if one can use casino chips to buy clothes in a mall, to
pay taxes, and to buy all kinds of products and services, has a new currency
been created? Indeed, an extreme case of the inside money model would be
private monies issued by malls and merchants. And an extreme case of this is
the creation of digital currency for use in the world's largest mall—the
Internet. If a digital currency gains the public's trust and is accepted by all
merchants and consumers on the Internet, the distinction between that
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and outside money (that is, dollars or francs or pounds), will be arbitrary. In
every sense of the word, digital currency is the same as cash.
When there is already a widely accepted and well-behaved national currency,
why would anyone want a new currency? The following section enumerates
some reasons digital currency is needed for online commercial transactions.
These reasons are based on the difference between electronic commerce and
physical markets.
However, there are arguments both for and against creating inside monies in
physical markets. For example, Champ et al. (1996) examines Canadian and
U.S. banking experiences during the late-19th century, and suggest that
banking panics and failures are less severe when private monies or inside
monies are available to alleviate liquidity constraints (that is, the lack of cash
to meet cash demand). On the other hand, Williamson and Wright (1994)
argue that private monies as a medium of exchange may fail to provide the
reliability and ready acceptance of national outside monies. This may result in
economic losses. For example, dollars facilitate transactions because everyone
is willing to accept dollars to exchange commodities. In bartering, both parties
must know the quality of each other's goods. With cash transactions, the
uncertainty is less because at least the quality of the cash is certain. However,
if that cash is private money, this type of transaction is no different from
bartering.
Needs for Electronic Currency Payment Systems
In the physical world, despite the convenience of paying by check, credit card,
or charge card, cash remains the most frequently used payment medium in
terms of the number of transactions. Similarly, many factors in electronic
commerce drive the need for a digital cash equivalent.
Anonymity in Transactions
The first basic need for digital cash harks back to the concern about con-
Page 431
sumer privacy discussed in Chapter 8. Non-cash payment systems also can
implement anonymity, as encryption technologies separate payment
information from buyer identification to conceal the buyer's identity from
banks or sellers. In models using trusted third parties, the privacy of consumer
information depends solely on this third party. While possible, none of these
methods is as easy, complete, or efficient in preserving consumer privacy as
digital currencies, in which only values are transferred without payer
information. The bank issuing digital currency keeps track only of serial
numbers to authenticate the value of a currency, and digital coins carry
encrypted messages about the user, which can be revealed only by legal
means.
Micropayments and the Internet
The second factor driving the use of digital currency is the economic need to
minimize transaction costs. Non-cash payment systems, as discussed in earlier
sections, require payees to verify and authenticate each payment, a highly
inefficient method for small-value transactions. Developing a cost-effective
payment mechanism to implement small-value transactions is a fundamental
prerequisite in commercializing the Internet, where many information goods
have values less than $1.
As the transaction costs of non-cash payment systems decrease, an increasing
percentage of transactions may become cashless. However, despite
increasingly sophisticated network financial technologies, paper- and
electronic-based payment systems still incur significant costs for handling and
authorization. Consequently, the use of cash has persisted. According to one
estimate, cash is used in 85 percent of transactions although it accounts for
only 0.5 percent of the value of transactions. Similar needs exist for electronic
commerce. It is critical for digital currency to be fully developed and accepted
if information trading is to take off on the Internet because neither a PCS nor
an NFT payment method is adequate for micropayments. Although digital
currency will not replace traditional payment methods for many products, it is
certainly well-suited to pay for accessing web pages, for example, and for the
commercialization of networked information.

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The Transferability of Value
The third motivating factor behind digital cash is the need for transferability,
by which two parties may exchange goods and services without an intervening
third party. Non-cash payment systems are mediated by one or more third
parties, such as check- or credit card-clearing services. A system involving a
third party is a type of client-server in which the server (the third party)
represents the authority who backs up the validity of transactions. In contrast, a
transferable payment system supports peer-to-peer transactions in which the
role of the third party is subsumed within the digital currency. Although
transferability is not absolutely required to achieve payment and settlement
between two parties, any non-transferable payment system unnecessarily
increases the transaction costs and can delay the settlement process as an
on-line third party is required for each transaction.
Despite clear incentives, initial proposals for digital cash are tempered by the
fear of double spending and counterfeiting. For that reason Ecash by DigiCash
(http://www.digicash.com), for example, requires payees to verify a coin's
validity with a payment server or a bank. If valid, the coin is reissued under a
new serial number. In an effort to make Ecash acceptable, an unnecessary third
party and the associated transaction costs are involved. A truly transferable
digital currency will be one that can be circulated peer-to-peer online and
offline. The following section examines proposed digital currencies, including
Ecash, in detail.
10.5. Properties and Specifications of Digital

Currencies
Digital currencies are digitally exchangeable cash. Therefore, digital
currencies and payment systems must satisfy the monetary properties expected
of cash and the requirements of the digital communication network. It is
simple
Page 433
to extend the NFT model into a value transfer model in which monetary value
is exchanged, similar to any type of currency, instead of account information.
CyberCash, discussed as an NFT system in section 10.3, is implementing an
extension of its system to enable peer-to-peer transactions that do not use a
TTP for authentication.
Desirable Properties of Digital Currency
Developers of digital currency have a wide range of options for implementing

strong safety requirements of transmitting values over the network. For
example, a secure digital currency can be implemented by using strong
encryption algorithms, by employing tamper-resistant hardware, or by securing
the network communication. Although physical specifications of digital coins
and tokens may vary, the following properties are fundamental to any digital
currency payment system.
Monetary Value
To be used as a monetary unit, digital currency must have value that can be
exchanged for other goods and services, be used to pay fiduciary obligations,
or be transferred to another person. Because digital currency is essentially a
file, it does not have an intrinsic value and must be linked to another system of
value. The most common implementation is to base the value of digital
currency on bank deposits, credits, or pre-payments using outside money.
After a digital currency is convertible to dollars, the next step is for it to be
accepted in the market as a monetary token. After becoming accepted and
trusted, a digital currency can establish related properties, such as
exchangeability and transferability.
Convenience
Convenience has been the biggest factor in the growth of notational currencies,
such as checks, which are scalable and easy to transport. Similarly, digital
currencies must be convenient to use, store, access, and transport. A digital
Page 434
file may allow remote access to money via telephone, modem, or Internet
connection. Electronic storage and transfer devices or network capabilities will
be needed. To gain wide acceptance, digital cash also must be convenient in
terms of scalability and interoperability so that users need not carry multiple
denominations or multiple versions for each operating system.
Security
To secure physical money and coins, one needs to store them in wallets, safes
or other private places. If digital currencies are stored on hard drives connected
to an open network, theoretically anybody can snoop and tamper with the
money. Encryption protects digital currency against tampering. Some
proposals using smart cards (for example, Mondex) store digital currency in
tamper-resistant hardware that can be maintained offline. Ecash relies on the
security of Ecash client software residing on users' computers.
At the same time, digital currencies must be resistant to accidents by owners.
Dollar bills are printed on strong paper that withstands many adverse
treatments, such as washing. To achieve similar security, adequate protection
standards are needed in physical specifications of digital coins and in policy
matters for legal and commercial liabilities.
Authentication
Money is authenticated by visually inspecting bills and coins. Although further

tests could include weighing, chemical analysis, and contacting the authorities,
authentication of physical currency is usually a simple matter. Digital
currency, however, cannot be visually inspected, and it is difficult to
distinguish the original from a counterfeit. Therefore, inspection of digital
currency requires authenticating secondary information that accompanies the
bills or coins, such as the digital signatures of banks or payers attached to the
currency (serial number). A more rigid system will require contacting a third
party each time a transaction is made. Although this system is more secure, the
transaction costs may be too high for small-value purchases. A hardware-based
system such as Mondex relies on software and hardware and does not
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require authentication for each transfer of values. Other systems will have to
strengthen their client software or introduce hardware protection to allow
peer-to-peer transactions.
Non-Refutability
Acknowledging payment and receipt is a basic property required of a payment

system. In cash transactions, simple receipt is enough to establish non-
refutability. A similar exchange of digital receipts can be used for digital
transactions. An alternative is to append all transaction records into the digital
currency. In this system, digital coins accumulate information about all parties
involved in past transactions. These are called identified tokens, in contrast to
anonymous tokens, which do not reveal information about users.
Accessibility and Reliability
One advantage of digital currency over cash is its capability to be transported

over the network. Users can store digital money at home but access it remotely
via telephone or modem, the same network used to clear payments. Because of
this crucial role, digital payment systems must provide continuous, fast, and
reliable connections.
Anonymity
Unlike checks and cards, cash transactions are anonymous. An anonymous

payment system is needed to protect against revealing purchase patterns and
other consumer information, although untraceable transactions are opposed by
the government in view of possible criminal uses. Nevertheless, the need will
persist, and anonymity is perhaps the single most important property of cash
transactions.
Digital currency can be equipped with varying degrees of anonymity, masking
the user identity to the bank, the payee, or both. Strong anonymity guarantees
untraceability whereas a weaker version allows the user's identity to be traced
when the need arises. The issue of anonymity may evokes debates about tax
evasion, money laundering and other criminal uses of digital

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currency. But the economic rationale for simple, anonymous digital coins is
that they reduce transaction costs by eliminating third parties and protect
consumer information that could be used to price-discriminate among
consumers.
Technical Specifications of Digital Currencies
Two types of digital currency have been developed, but the general trend
appears to be toward a mixed system. Ecash, developed by DigiCash
(http://www.digicash.com), is the forerunner of Internet payment systems
based on online transactions. Mondex represents the other type of payment
system, based on offline transactions. Unlike their online counterparts aimed at
Internet users, offline payment systems grew out of existing EFT mechanisms
using debit cards, such as telephone and copy cards. These cards hold prepaid
account information and merchants who accept these cards are usually
credited for the transaction amounts by the card issuer. By using computer
chips embedded in these cards (hence the name smart cards) payment
information and values can be transferred. As issuers develop network
interface devices, smart cards can be used online as well, competing directly
with online payment systems. Similarly, Ecash and other online payment
systems are introducing electronic wallets similar to smart cards, enabling
offline transactions. As the two become integrated, the distinction between
online
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and offline systems is rapidly disappearing. More detailed discussions of
Ecash and Mondex follow.
Ecash
Ecash is a digital currency protocol developed by DigiCash and tested

extensively on the Internet. Ecash uses public key encryption technologies to
maintain the integrity of digital coins. By varying the encryption, Ecash can
have strong or weak anonymity. DigiCash licenses Ecash technologies to
banks, which convert outside money into digital currency and serve as
currency servers in authenticating, clearing and settling accounts. Mark Twain
Bank of St. Louis (http://www.marktwain.com), shown in figure 10.9, is the
first electronic bank to license the Ecash technology that serves interface
functions between dollar-denominated accounts and Ecash accounts.
Figure 10.9 Mark Twain Bank's Ecash page.
In this version of Ecash, a user first establishes a WorldCurrency Access

account with Mark Twain Bank by transferring money by check or wire.
WorldCurrency Access accounts are denominated by outside money (dollars)
and are regular bank accounts insured by the FDIC. The conversion from
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outside money into inside money occurs when the user requests a certain
amount of money be put into the Ecash Mint, which manufactures electronic
"coins." These coins are no longer insured by the FDIC—unless current law
has changed. The customer uses Ecash software, downloaded from the bank
and installed on his computer, to view and download these coins to his hard
drive. Ecash Mint is where electronic currency is validated and certified. A
user can move any amount of Ecash between his hard drive and Ecash Mint, as
well as into WorldCurrency Access accounts (see fig. 10.10).
A user can then transfer a digital coin to a merchant who accepts Ecash and
who also maintains an account with Mark Twain Bank. Upon receiving the
coin, the merchant deposits it in his account. This implementation requires
receivers of Ecash to present the Ecash to the bank or Ecash server for
verification. Therefore, this is not really a peer-to-peer system in which no
intermediaries are needed. But this requirement serves mainly to counter the
security problem, and there is no reason why receivers cannot transfer it to a
third person.
Figure 10.10 Ecash model of Mark Twain Bank.
In essence, a digital coin is merely an encrypted serial number. After money is
transferred into Ecash Mint, coins are created when a user requests that Ecash
Mint "mint" some money to be transferred to the user's hard drive. The request
is transmitted through Ecash software residing on the user's computer.
According to DigiCash specification, a user's software generates a random
number, which serves as a serial number or a note. The number is encrypted by
the user's encryption keys and sent to the bank, which signs the note with its
private signature to acknowledge that the note is backed by the user's account
(which is at this point withdrawn from the outside money account), and returns
the note to the user. The bank sees the coin again when it is deposited by the
payee and records the number to check all later redemptions against it to detect
double spending. Other information can also be attached to the coin.
Revelation of this information depends on the encryption methods used. If the
added information can be used to identify users, it is called an identified coin;
coins without this information are
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called anonymous coins.
Many variations of digital cash exist that differ primarily in terms of how the
coins are verified to prevent double spending. Whereas Ecash uses a central
bank (such as Mark Twain Bank), NetCash, proposed by Information Science
Institute of the University of Southern California, uses currency servers that
may be owned and operated by different banks or non-bank organizations.
Currently, NetBank (http://www.netbank.com/~netcash/) implements the
NetCash protocol based on e-mail verification. NetCash is clearly aiming for
a digital currency standard that can be widely accepted. However, to avoid
double spending, a coin still must be submitted to a currency server which
issues a new coin upon verifying its validity. For this reason, the system is
difficult for implementing peer-to-peer transactions.
Millicent
An extreme opposite approach is Millicent, proposed by Digital Corporation

(http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/millicent). The Millicent system,
self-described as a pay-ahead coupon system, uses vendor-specific digital
scrips, which are akin to merchant-issued coupons. Instead of using banks and
other intermediaries to verify that a coin was not double spent, a scrip is
presented to a merchant, who locally verifies its validity, that is, decrypts it. A
scrip has a serial number with a particular value, an expiration date, and the
name of the vendor who accepts the scrip. Because Millicent requires no
currency servers and no intermediate steps to maintain its security and validity,
it presents a viable medium for transactions of extremely low value, for
example, one-tenth of a cent. Millicent is versatile enough to be used not only
as microcurrency but also as tokens, coupons, and advertising rebates. To
devise an effective sales promotion, a vendor has to target customers who need
added incentives to purchase his product. By combining consumer information
and the vendor-specific nature of a scrip, a seller can increase its market share
while consumers gain from lowered prices (Bester and Petrakis, 1996).

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Mondex
Mondex, developed by Mondex International (http://www.mondex.com/

mondex), is a smart-card system that transfers stored balances. A smart card is
a hardware platform with an integrated circuit inside that can be programmed
to prevent double spending without resorting to online verification. Smart
cards are different from debit cards, which do not require pre-withdrawal of
cash. Similar to Ecash users, smart card users must withdraw money from a
currency-denominated account to a digital currency account. Thus, a Mondex
card is a portable hard drive with a built-in Ecash Mint. Both Ecash and
Mondex are prepaid systems, unlike debit cards, which might be considered
"just-in-time" pay cards.
The Mondex system contains a layer of market players. Mondex International
holds worldwide ownership of its smart-card technology. In each country, it
licenses the right to issue Mondex currency (for example, in Mondex dollar
unit (M$) or Mondex pound unit ($£), and so on) to one issuer or a consortium
of companies who, in a sense, mint Mondex currency and distribute it to
financial intermediaries such as banks. Finally, multiple card sellers also sell
smart cards directly to consumers, who may be individual banks or smart-card
intermediaries.
Despite this complex layer of Mondex issuers and distributors, the Ecash
model is organized in the same way, including Ecash patent holders, Mark
Twain Bank issuers and other intermediary Ecash distributors. The difference
between Ecash and Mondex lies in their hardware organization. For one, a
smart card is capable of offline transactions whereas Ecash needs to be online.
For another, a smart card uses hardware to make the system tamper-resistant
whereas Ecash relies on software encryption and a trusted third party or
currency server. Despite the higher hardware costs, a smart card is a superior
payment platform because of its security, its applicability to peer-to-peer
transactions, and its versatility in handling multicurrency payments online or
offline. This difference in hardware will soon disappear; Ecash can be sold in
smart cards and Mondex cards will interface with computers and become part
of the online electronic cash regime. The superiority or popularity of one
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system over the other will be determined in the marketplace, based on
consumer acceptance and prices, which is discussed in the next section.
10.6. Evaluation and Policy Issues

The potential ramifications of widespread use of digital currency have spurred
research and heated debate of key economic issues regarding electronic
payment systems and intermediaries. Specific topic areas include the
following:
● Information contents of transactions
● Transactional efficiency
● Monetary effects
● Organizational effects
Information Contents of Transactions
Discussion surrounding the information contents of transactions focuses on

identifiable personal information of the buyer—such as name, physical or
e-mail address, and telephone number— which can be matched with
consumption or preference data. As discussed in Chapter 8, sellers could use
consumer information to price-discriminate among buyers by personalizing
their products and pricing them so as to charge the maximum amount each
consumer is prepared to pay. The only protection consumers have to control
information on their spending habits and preferences is through privacy in the
transaction.
Payment systems based on trusted a third party rely on the intermediary to
protect privacy. Sellers know the account or membership numbers of potential
buyers, but sellers cannot link them with persons without the intermediary's
help. If the account that a member keeps with the intermedi-
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ary draws its balance directly from a source such as credit cards, purchase
information may be completely shielded from credit card companies.
An NFT payment system such as CyberCash, however, is no different from
conventional processes in which buyers give personal information to sellers.
CyberCash does not allow merchants to read the payment information, which
is encrypted, but merchants have a complete record of sales that may include
the buyer's identity, depending on the way the payment system is
implemented. At present, using a CyberCash ID number, CyberCash can inject
a certain degree of anonymity. Buyers present only their CyberCash ID
number to merchants, which is then verified by the merchant via a CyberCash
server that confirms the validity of the number. Regardless of the way
identification is implemented, however, credit card companies will have
detailed information about consumer purchasing behaviors.
Digital currency, on the other hand, maintains the buyer's complete anonymity.
In systems such as Mondex, peer-to-peer transfers are completely anonymous,
and hence untraceable. In an Ecash implementation, digital coins may be
completely anonymous or weakly anonymous. A completely anonymous
system does not include any personal information in the coin other than a
serial number, and allows indefinite circulation of the coin. A weakly
anonymous coin may contain the name of the person who first purchased it,
but the name is encrypted in such a way that it is revealed only if it is
double-spent. Any proposed digital currency is capable of implementing strong
and weak versions of anonymity.
Spending digital currency may generate more transaction data than a
conventional cash transaction if a digital coin is required to be cleared each
time it is spent. However, anonymity can still be maintained by blinding the
digital coin. The process of creating a digital coin begins with a serial number
generated by the user. A third party, such as a currency server, verifies this
number. The serial number is the identifiable information that is linked to a
user. However, after generating a serial number, the user may blind the
number before sending it to be verified so that the intermediary cannot read it.
This is done by multiplying the serial number with a random blinding
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factor that cannot be determined by the currency server. The user receives the
coin (serial number) digitally signed by the server, and un-blinds it before
spending it. Upon receiving the coin from a redeemer, the currency server
verifies its digital signature and records the serial number on its list of spent
numbers to prevent double spending. Note that in this blinding scheme, the
server has no way of knowing who spent the coin.
Not surprisingly, the degree of anonymity afforded by electronic payment
systems covers the same range of options offered by various conventional
payment systems. As with conventional systems, the choice of a particular
payment method in electronic commerce will be determined by the needs of
each payment, based on such factors as convenience, anonymity, and costs.
Transactional Efficiency
Although anonymity has been the focal point in the debate on electronic
payment proposals, the transaction cost will determine the future of any
electronic payment system. For large-value transactions, existing payment
methods using checks and credit cards can be adequately converted to the open
Internet after security concerns are alleviated. More importantly, payment
systems using the Internet can lower the cost of credit card-clearing services,
for which expensive private closed networks are built. Using the Internet will
eliminate a substantial portion of redundant infrastructure costs, and enable
small merchants and individuals to offer check and credit card payment
options for their customers.
In terms of reducing per-transaction cost, a PCS such as First Virtual appears
to be in a position similar to NFT systems, as long as First Virtual uses credit
cards or bank account transfers to settle payments. If First Virtual or a similar
intermediary settles members' accounts only intermittently, it may offer a less
costly way to handle repeated payment transactions, just as inter-bank
payments are settled once a day via Fedwire or CHIPS. However, as proposed,
First Virtual does not represent a significant reduction in transaction costs.
The cost of clearing a payment becomes critical for small-value transac

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tions that might involve payment of a penny or less to view a web page. In the
case of digital currency, the level of transactional efficiency depends on
whether users need to interact with a third party to verify the currency's
validity, which increases costs. After verification, the intermediary re-issues a
new coin, making a digital coin in this scheme non-transferable. Bypassing
this cumbersome and repetitive process may compromise the level of security
against double spending or counterfeiting, or may require a secure hardware
platform, as in Mondex. Because encryption technologies are adequate enough
to support a high degree of security, systems such as Millicent may be viable
for high-volume, low-value transactions at minimal transaction costs.
(1+CD)
(CD+RD)
Monetary Effects
Digital currency payment systems have raised macroeconomic questions and

concerns regarding their impact on the money supply and governments' control
over monetary policy. In the U.S., research has shown, however, that the
Federal Reserve system's control of the money supply can be adjusted to
reflect the change in the money demand, and as such government officials
consider the effect of digital currency on the monetary system to be minimal
(Blinder, 1995). Nevertheless, proposed digital currency systems may affect
the monetary system in two ways: they may influence the supply of money by
changing the money multiplier, or they may change, in the long run, the
velocity of money, affecting price levels and interest rates. The effect of digital
currency on the money supply depends on how inside monies are created
whereas its effect on the velocity of money is uncertain.
To address these issues, you must first review how the money supply is
controlled by governments through central banks or, in the U.S., the Federal
Reserve. The money stock (M1) consists of currency and checkable deposits
held by the public. A larger definition of money stock (M2) includes time and
savings deposits and money-market instruments in addition to the demand
deposits included in M1. The public holds a portion of the currency as cash
and the rest in banks as checkable deposits. The ratio of currency to
Page 445
deposits is called the currency-deposit ratio, which is about .4 in the U.S.—that
is, $40 in cash is carried for every $100 deposit. Once deposited, the
bank can lend the money to a third person, who in turn holds some of the
money in cash and deposits the rest. The money supply is created through this
process of deposits and lendings.
In the U.S., the Federal Reserve (the Fed) controls the money supply by
changing the amount of currency in circulation and the bank's capability to
lend. The Fed controls the amount of currency by selling and buying bonds
through its open market operations. When the Fed sells (or buys) bonds, it
reduces (or increases) the amount of currency circulating. The Fed also
requires each bank to hold a portion of their money in cash or with the Federal
Reserve banks to meet the cash demand of consumers. The resulting
reserve-deposit ratio may be changed by the Fed, but is currently around 10
percent. This means that for every $10 of checkable deposits, a bank must
have a cash reserve of $1.
The currency and the banks' deposits with the Fed are called the high-powered
money or the monetary base. The effect of the Fed's monetary operations on
the money stock involves the money multiplier, which is determined by the
currency-deposit ratio and the reserve-deposit ratio. The money supply
function can be expressed in the following equation:
Money Stock=(Money Multiplier) ¥ (Monetary Base), where
Money Multiplier=
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CD is the currency-deposit ratio, and RD is the reserve-deposit ratio. This
means that the total stock of money in the economy is 2.8 times greater than
the monetary base. The money multiplier and the stock of money can be
graphed, as in figure 10.11, using the money multiplier.
Figure 10.11 The monetary base and the money supply.
Figure 10.11 depicts a situation in which an increase in the monetary base,
denoted as DB, increases the total money supply by DM. The exact monetary
effect depends on the money multiplier, which is DM/DB in the graph. An
increase in the money multiplier (a counter-clockwise rotation around the
origin, that is, steeper, for the money multiplier line) implies that an increase in
the monetary base causes a larger increase in the money supply.
Ecash, e-money, or CyberCash systems essentially create new currencies, but
their effect on the money supply depends on whether they are backed by the
national currency. If Ecash, for example, is backed by dollar-denominated
currency accounts, inside (digital) money is exchanged with outside (fiat)
money. For example, suppose Alice withdraws $100 from her conventional
bank, deposits it with Mark Twain Bank's Ecash account, and converts it into
$100 worth of Ecash coins. If Mark Twain Bank does not hold the $100 but
deposits it with another bank, or lends the $100 under the same condition as
any other bank, the supply of money does not change by Alice moving her
money to the electronic bank.
However, say Alice withdraws $100 into cash to meet her need for cash
transactions. Such cash holding by a consumer represents a reduction in
demand deposits and the capacity to create money by lending institutions.
With Ecash instead of cash, Alice does not carry $100, which she would
normally have held for cash transactions, and therefore more money is
available for lending by banks. In other words, consumers will hold less cash
and more deposits with the availability of digital currency, which decreases the
currency-deposit ratio and increases the money multiplier (by reducing CD in
the money supply equation). As a result, the overall money supply will
increase if Mark Twain Bank, or any escrow intermediaries that hold backup
outside money for digital currency, is allowed to operate as a lending institu
Page 447
tion. The effect on the money supply will be even greater if Mark Twain Bank
is not subject to the Fed's normal reserve requirements and chooses to have a
lower reserve ratio. On the other hand, if digital currency issuers are required
to hold the dollar (outside money) in an escrow account and cannot lend the
deposit to a third person, the same amount of cash balance is held, either in
digital cash or fiat cash, with no effect on the money multiplier.
If, however, digital currency is not backed by dollars or any outside money,
digital currency is then simply a product whose price is determined only by the
supply and demand in the market, akin to holding foreign currency in lieu of
the dollar for cash transactions. Imagine that U.S. residents are suddenly using
Mexican pesos or German marks for everyday transactions. Its effects on the
money supply and the dollar interest rates deserve a great deal of investigation.
For example, suppose that residents in Texas adopt a digital currency, which is
not linked to the dollar, for their cash transactions. Alternatively, suppose that
members of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) integrate
their economies while their currencies are maintained separately, and Texas
residents begin to use Mexican pesos instead of dollars for grocery shopping.
The dollar demand for cash will be greatly reduced. To reduce the supply of
dollars, the Fed may engage in open market operations, for example, selling
government bonds to the public, thereby increasing its cash holding and taking
cash out of circulation. U.S. monetary officials claim that changes in the
money supply can be adequately met by the Federal Reserve System, through
open market operations, whether or not digital currency is backed up by fiat
money. Nevertheless, if the Fed wants to reduce the money supply as the
demand for dollars decreases, it needs to raise the interest rate to sell bonds. At
the same time, people want to dispose of their cash by buying bonds, so that
the increased demand for bonds will lower interest rates. The net effect of the
Fed's open market operations and the citizen's demand for bonds may very
well offset each other to produce stable interest rates. However, if the Fed's
operations are out of sync, temporary instability will have a significant effect
on the economy—as evidenced by the stock market response to a quarter point
increase in the interest rate.

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It may be enlightening to contrast the workings of Mark Twain Bank and Visa
International. The latter creates credit, but this is offset by the need for Visa's
investors and owners to inject funds to cover the float between paying vendors
and receiving payments from card users. Because the inflow, on average,
equals the outflow, no net increase occurs in the money supply. Note that the
borrowers do not deposit their unused credit with anyone. Credit is extended
only when Visa incurs an obligation to the vendor, which is a debit for Visa
covered by its investor-provided reserves. There is no multiplier effect like the
bank deposit/loan phenomenon. The total credit enjoyed by card users is offset
by the invested funds needed to cover the float.
Another long-term impact that some economists posit is the possibility of a
change in money velocity due to the introduction of digital currency
(Panurach, 1996). The velocity of money refers to the rate at which the money
circulates. Suppose that each transaction is worth $10. If the total transactional
size of an economy is $1,000, requiring 100 transactions, the money circulated
may be $1,000, which means that each $10 bill is used only once. On the other
hand, a fast circulating $10 bill may be used for all 100 transactions, resulting
in a much higher velocity of money.
Changes in payment systems—for example, employee compensation, not
payments for transactions—also affect the velocity of money, but these
changes are usually institutional. For example, in recent years, the increasing
use of electronic forms of wages has lowered average money balances.
Suppose that a person gets paid $3,000 in cash at the beginning of each month
and spends it by the end of a month. The average cash balance will be $1,500.
But if he is paid $1,500 twice a month, the average balance is only $750. The
economy will have to print $1,500 worth of money for the former, while it
needs only $750 for the latter. If the size of the economy is the same, the latter
meets the same transactional needs with less money; there is a higher velocity
of money. Similarly, if people use more non-cash payment methods, the need
for cash diminishes, and the economy will not need to have more cash. Given
the cash holding, then, convenient forms of wage payment and transactions
tend to increase the money velocity.
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However, the change in transaction speed seldom affects the real economy. In
the above example, the size of the economy remains the same regardless of the
money velocity. On the other hand, the real economy will grow if transactional
opportunities arise. More convenient money facilitates the way money
circulates in an economy, but its real effect is in lowering transactions cost,
which increases economic efficiency and the level of overall economy. Many
proposed electronic payment systems may simply replace existing payment
methods without any real economic effect, if they have little effect on
transactions cost.
Another issue pertaining to having more convenient forms of money is the
relationship between the velocity of money and inflation. The earliest
monetary theory, the quantity theory of money equation, shows that inflation
increases if the stock of money or the velocity of money increases. However, if
the money stock adjusts to compensate the change in the velocity of money,
the price level will not change. Furthermore, simply having more convenient
money would not affect the real economy without fundamental changes. For
example, it is true that whenever a $10 bill exchanges hands, a transaction
value of $10 is created. If the same amount of money circulates twice as fast,
twice as much value will be created. However, to have a real impact on the
economy, these values have to represent changing levels of production in real
goods. For example, the sum of weekly transactional values on the NYSE
often exceeds that of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United
States, but the figure is of transactional—financial nature. The simple fact that
money changes hands more frequently does not mean it will have a real impact
on the economy.
Finally, the Internet is global and may add significant instability to a nation's
monetary system through mechanisms that are out of that government's
control. For example, if offshore banks require no, or lower, cash reserves for
deposits, this will effectively lower the reserve-deposit ratio. Also, if offshore
banks offer higher interest rates, people will reduce their cash holding,
depositing their cash at these banks—which lowers the currency-deposit ratio.
As a result, the money multiplier increases. When the monetary base changes,
the larger money multiplier will produce a more volatile money
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supply, and possibly changes in price levels and fluctuations in the nominal
GDP. Furthermore, if most people prefer to hold international electronic
currency, open market operations by a central bank or the Fed may not be
effective in controlling the amount of currency or interest rates. Like a small
country whose exchange rate floats with dominant foreign currencies,
domestic monetary policies may be rendered ineffective by a worldwide digital
currency.
Effects on Market Organization

A new form of payment settlement system creates a new type of financial
intermediary. The changes will be especially significant not only because
electronic payment systems duplicate payment systems used in physical
markets but also because they incorporate market processes that are not
traditionally part of the payment clearing process. For example, the
identification, authentication, and certification functions needed to begin a
transaction have largely remained separate from the payment clearing process.
In a face-to-face purchase, these functions are performed by checking a
driver's license or examining a signature. In contrast, electronic payment
systems must support these pre-payment processes as well, integrating such
diverse functions as payment, market infrastructure, certification, security, and
insurance. This results in a new type of market institutions and value creation
processes, affecting competition and facilitating vertical integration.
A payment clearing service such as First Virtual is more integrated than NFT
methods because it basically forms a separate market in which First Virtual not
only handles payments but also acts as a market maker, quality guarantor and
security. As a result, First Virtual offers a cost-effective way to sell and buy
products electronically. However, it lacks interoperability as its membership
information is not shared with other similar services. Consumers have to
register with each PCS that exists if the merchant membership does not
overlap. Imagine having to be a member to shop at each mall, which has its
own payment system!
As for NFT systems such as CyberCash and digital check or credit card
services, the role of payment intermediary will continue to be that of expedit

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ing settlement. Just as you see Visa, MasterCard, and other credit card logos
on a merchant's door, web pages will be strewn with electronic logos
informing consumers of optional payment systems honored at their sites. Each
consumer and merchant must open an account with CyberCash or other
payment services offered in the market. Does this represent any improvement
over physical markets? In this regard, digital credit cards using an industry
standard such as SET may have an advantage over using numerous NFT
intermediaries, each issuing their versions of electronic wallets. However,
credit card-based systems simply extend existing payment networks to the
Internet, which may be sufficient for old models of business. As electronic
commerce demands new kinds of products and consumption behaviors,
electronic payment systems must also reflect these changes. For example, a
cost-effective micropayment system will be needed for microbundles and
microsales of information products. Even for this purpose alone, digital
currency and its related market infrastructure should be nurtured.
Left alone to markets, various forms of electronic payment systems will
differentiate by price, convenience and quality. Price certainly will be
determined by the difference between the cost of providing an electronic
payment service and the cost of using a conventional system—or the
consumer's willingness to pay given this opportunity cost. In terms of
transaction costs, online transactions must be far more efficient to generate
enough spread between the two options. Thus, efficiency gains are turned into
profit opportunities. However, this ignores consumers' willingness to pay,
which may very well increase because of convenience, anonymity and other
factors that are not available offline. Greater willingness to pay will support
electronic payment systems that may increase transaction costs. The major
challenges of electronic payment systems are not in reducing transaction costs
or perfecting security but in producing usage values to gain consumer
acceptance and devising efficient pricing strategies for various payment
intermediaries. For the Mondex system, (Clemons et al., 1997) identify various
ways to charge consumers for its service: selling cards, renting cards, charging
a fee for bank-to-card transfer, charging a fee for currency-to-Mondex
exchange, or discounting when Mondex currencies are traded for outside
monies. For digital
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currency, what is known as seigniorage can be a source of profit. Because this
involves monetary policies, banking regulation and international currency
exchanges, this chapter concludes by examining the role of governments in
promoting digital currency.
10.7. Digital Currency and Governments

After being created, digital currency can be traded on the global Internet,
meaning that digital currency is necessarily an international issue. It is not
unimaginable that you will see the last of foreign currency trading due to
global digital currency. Equally likely, however, is that digital currencies may
add to the number of existing international units of money, further
complicating foreign exchange rates and trading.
Despite these potentially serious impacts, the U.S. government's attitude
toward digital currency is one of non-interference and sometimes one of
promotion. The reasons for this policy can be summarized from recent remarks
by the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan (1996). First, in an
environment without government intervention, private businesses are
motivated to self-regulate. As firms compete for reputation and strive to
inform consumers of their quality, they have ample incentive for
self-regulation and industry-wide cooperation. Second, innovations mandated
by governments often differ from market-driven solutions. The viability of any
new product, such as a digital currency, must be proven in the marketplace by
consumers and merchants rather than by policymaking bodies. Together, these
rationales favor non-interference in the development of digital money.
This said, governments play an important role, by choice or by necessity, in
several areas. The first issue demanding a closer examination is the possible
reduction in government revenue due to private monies. Second, there are
various regulatory issues involving consumer protection and law enforcement
issues, such as money laundering, that demand government attention. Third,
Page 453
the legal and monetary ramifications of who can issue digital currency warrant
closer attention by the government. Finally, a government action may have no
impact on the Internet because an online operator can simply ship its operation
to a server in another country, often involving no physical relocation.
Effects on Government Revenues
Money is exchanged with goods and services of equal value except when it is
issued by the government, which gains from the difference between the cost of
printing a dollar and the value of a dollar, known as the seigniorage. The
government derives further revenue from dollar currency held by consumers,
which amounts to interest-free lending to the government by the public—a
privilege often abused by excessive printing. In 1994, most of the $20 billion
generated by the Federal Reserve could be accounted for by the government's
privilege to print money (Blinder, 1994). Thus, when private monies are
issued, they take away some portion of the government's revenue related to
seigniorage and other currency operations.
As long as a national government is the only currency issuer, its revenue
related to seigniorage is the monopoly profit. If private firms are allowed to
print money, the profit will be shared with these firms. The dollar is accepted
by the public because of the public's confidence in the U.S. government.
Likewise, the acceptance of private money will depend on the public's trust in
the companies who issue the money. This does not mean that private
companies will appropriate profits that previously were the government's
revenues. Whether the profit is kept by them or is distributed to consumers will
depend on the competitiveness in the currency industry. If, for example, online
banks compete by paying interest on digital currency deposits, the interest paid
to depositors is the seigniorage now being appropriated by governments. The
competition among issuers may well drive the private profit to a level where a
significant portion of the monopoly profit currently enjoyed by governments is
instead given to consumers in the form of convenience, service, and quality.
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Regulatory Issues
Governments play a role in a wide range of regulatory issues regarding the use
of currency. Using the example of the U.S., this section discusses in detail how
a current reading of relevant regulations and laws highlights the need for
governments to resolve any uncertainty regarding the use of digital currency.
First, in terms of consumer protection, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act
(EFTA) and its Federal Reserve implementation rules, known as Regulation E,
determine the rights and responsibilities of consumers and financial
institutions. EFTA and Regulation E establish the rights, liabilities, and
responsibilities of parties in EFTs involving consumers. For example, under
EFTA, consumers are liable only to a maximum of $500 for unauthorized use
of a stolen or lost credit card. Further, this regulation establishes consumers'
rights regarding account disputes, damages, and losses. However, these
regulations are limited to EFTs and do not seem to cover, as written now,
electronic currency because digital currency is not "transfer information" but
rather money itself. Instead, if you lose a balance on your Mondex card, for
example, the issuer must provide consumers with remedies. The terms of
remedies will most likely need to be disclosed before consumers purchase
digital currency. However, disclosure rules governed by EFTA and Regulation
E also do not extend to digital currency. Unlike services based on dollar
currency, digital currency intermediaries will have to assure consumers of their
quality and reliability to succeed in the market. Through competition, it is
likely that an assortment of digital currency will be offered to exploit various
needs of transaction, with prices reflecting the degree of reliability and
convenience.
Second, government agencies require banks to keep records and file reports on
certain types of currency transactions to detect and counter money laundering
and other criminal activities. The government's control over money

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laundering depends on its capability to follow the money trail. While the
debate has been raging on whether to allow anonymous digital coins, a
technical issue has not been resolved regarding who will provide routine data
on money movements. The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) requires banks and
financial institutions to report certain transactions, for example, currency
transactions exceeding $10,000. However, BSA definitions regarding financial
institutions, currency, monetary instruments, and funds transfers may or may
not apply to digital currency and currency servers. For example, financial
institutions that are subject to the BSA regulation are entities licensed to
transmit funds or an issuer, seller, or redeemer of traveler's checks. If digital
currency is treated as a traveler's check, the BSA may apply to the issuer. But
legal definitions must be cleared by legislators beforehand. Finally, the nature
of digital currency may pose a problem for law enforcement. In general, digital
currencies are expected to be used for extremely low-value transactions, which
would be a poor medium for money laundering if regulatory agencies monitor
the frequency of transactions as well as the amount. Existing control over
dollar currency may be adequate to discourage criminal uses of digital
currency.
Third, the advent of digital currency raises the need to reexamine existing state
and federal laws, which regulate who can issue private monies and accept
money as deposits. Until 1913, state-chartered private banks were allowed to
issue currency in the United States subject to state regulations, and some states
today have laws regulating the issuance of private monies. However, a federal
law (18 U.S.C. 336), in addition to the U.S. Constitution's grant to Congress to
coin money (Article 1, Section 8), appears to prohibit private businesses from
issuing currency. 18 U.S.C. 336 codifies the 1862 Stamp Payments Act, which
has a direct bearing on digital coins. It states that:
"…whoever makes, issues, circulates, or pays out any note, check,
memorandum, token, or other obligation for a sum of less than $1,
intended to circulate as money or to be received or used in lieu of
lawful money of
Page 456
the United States,"
is subject to a fine and six months' imprisonment. The Stamp Payments Act
was enacted during the Civil War to counter inflationary effects of notes issued
by merchants because of the disappearing U.S. coins (which were stockpiled
because the coin's actual value was higher than its face value due to inflation).
Although the Federal Reserve and other government agencies have maintained
a laissez-faire attitude toward someone who can issue digital currency, this
uncertainty needs to be addressed in a legal and concrete way.
An equally uncertain issue for digital currency issuers and servers is whether
they are considered deposit takers. Under the Glass Steagall Act, Section 21,
only banks can accept deposits, and deposit-taking institutions are prohibited
from selling securities. Thus, only banks would be allowed to offer digital
currency services if selling digital coins is considered to be accepting deposits.
On the other hand, if digital currency is regarded as a digital commodity, any
retailer could sell digital currency. Furthermore, if digital currency issuers are
classified as banks, the Bank Holding Company Act (12 U.S.C. 1841) will
prohibit any non-bank firm from owning a business that issues digital
currency. The Federal Reserve closely controls deposit-taking banks through
these regulations. However, if non-bank firms are allowed to issue digital
currency, the Fed's control will be weakened, although Fed Reserve officials
do not see a significant change in their ability to control the monetary policy.
Nevertheless, Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the Justice Department
should put forth their clear opinions regarding these issues if digital currency
services are to be accepted for electronic commerce.
Issues in International Commerce
The nature of the Internet as an international network also raises the question
of whether one governmental body can regulate banking and financial services
that may operate overseas through offshore (Internet) banks and digital
currency issuers. These overseas entities have the same local presence on the
Internet while circumventing regulations imposed on local banks.
Page 457
For example, offshore banks are usually not subject to income tax, reserve
requirements, insurance premiums, and so on, which burden U.S. domestic
banks. This lack of regulation means opportunities for banks and financial
institutions. But, consumers also will benefit from the globalization of
banking. Many offshore banks are already advertising on the Internet for their
services, offering higher interest rates on deposits and better terms for loans.
As they expand their ability to transfer money to offshore sites through
cheaper communications media such as the Internet, ordinary consumers will
gain access to more favorable offshore banking. To date, offshore banking has
been available only to a few, whose large transactions justify offshore
banking's high cost (White, 1996).
Offshore banks have these advantages because customers do not need foreign
currency conversions. For example, Caribbean offshore banks allow
dollar-denominated accounts to serve U.S. residents. If offshore banking
involves foreign exchange, the benefit calculation will be more complex.
Using the same currency, offshore depositors are able to exploit the differences
in economic environment, such as banking regulations. However, if money is
ubiquitous worldwide and physical location is no longer relevant, what would
offshore banking mean? The increased use of worldwide digital currency may
eliminate regulatory differences among governments, and with it, many
advantages of offshore banking as well.
The prospect of a worldwide digital currency is at best puzzling as to its
impacts on the parity of national currencies and economies. First, what would
be the value of one, say, Digital Currency Unit (DCU$), if it is pegged to a
dollar? Internet users in France may be paid in DCU$, but when they convert
them into francs, they may have to use the dollar-to-franc exchange rate. The
system of foreign exchange will resemble that of the physical market, where
all currencies can be converted to a dollar. But the ever-changing exchange
rates do cause inconvenience for non-U.S. countries. Will this mean that every
country will issue digital currency denominated by its own currency unit?
One thing is certain: digital currencies will reflect the real international

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economy as long as they remain as inside monies because their exchange
values are determined by outside economies. Therefore, economic activities in
the electronic marketplace will determine the characteristics of digital money,
not vice versa.
Page 459
10.8. Summary
Although a plethora of disparate payment systems are offered for electronic
commerce, many firms are reluctant to expand into online commerce because
of a perceived lack of suitable payment mechanisms. Widely different
technical specifications make it difficult to choose an appropriate payment
method. This chapter, instead of focusing on the technical specifications of
proposed electronic payment systems, distinguishes electronic payment
methods based on what is transmitted over the network. Because consumers
are familiar with credit card payment methods, they may accept electronic
versions as the standard for electronic commerce.
Nevertheless, existing payment methods developed for relatively high-value
transactions cannot adequately support web-based information trading. A
cost-effective micropayment system is essential for transactions of extremely
small value, just as cash remains the preferred payment method for these
transactions. Anonymity is only one aspect of cash transaction, but it has
received disproportionate, often sensational, attention in the press and by
regulatory agencies while the economic need for a cash-like payment system
in electronic commerce is largely ignored. Factors such as micropayments and
peer-to-peer transfers in electronic commerce—especially for the information
market—seem to indicate a healthy market for digital currency or small-value
digital checks or credit cards.
In terms of the regulatory and monetary impact, private digital monies clearly
present problems and opportunities. But, as with any digital product, the future
of digital currency will be determined by the market demand and supply.
Consequently, it is more than likely that each payment method reviewed in this
chapter will find a niche market and consumers will selectively use an
appropriate payment method depending on whether they prefer convenience,
costs, privacy, or the advantage of credit extension. The usefulness of digital
currency, however, has to be emphasized in terms of what a
Page 460
web-based information economy would mean for the future of electronic
commerce and the Internet. With a suitable payment method, the age of
information will manifest itself on the Internet, albeit in a commercial form.
References
Bester, H., and E. Petrakis, 1996. "Coupons and Oligopolistic Price
Discrimination." International Journal of Industrial Organization, 14: 227_242.
Blinder, A.S., 1995. "Statements to the Congress." Federal Reserve Bulletin,
81(12): 1089_1093.
Champ, B., B.D. Smith and S.D. Williamson, 1996. "Currency Elasticity and
Banking Panics: Theory and Evidence." Canadian Journal of Economics,
29(4): 828_864.
Clemons, E.K., D.C. Carson and B.W. Weber, 1997. "Reengineering Money:
The Mondex Stored Value Card and Beyond." International Journal of
Electronic Commerce, 1(2): 5_31.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1995. "A Payment Revolution in the
Making." 1995 Annual Report.
Greenspan, A., 1996. Remarks given to the U.S. Treasury Conference,
"Toward Electronic Money and Banking: The Role of Government,"
September 19, 1996.
Page 461
Kalakota, R., and A.B. Whinston, 1997. Electronic Commerce: A Manager's
Guide. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Knudson, S.E., J.K. Walton, and F. M. Young, 1994. "Business-to-Business
Payments and the Role of Financial Electronic Data Interchange." Federal
Reserve Bulletin, 80(4): 269_278.
Panurach, P. 1996. "Money in Electronic Commerce: Digital Cash, Electronic
Funds Transfer, and Ecash." Communications of ACM, 39(6): 45_50.
U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1996. "An Introduction to Electronic Money
Issues." Prepared for the U.S. Department of the Treasury Conference Toward
Electronic Money and Banking: The Role of Government.
White, L. 1996. The Technology Revolution and Monetary Evolution.
Presented at the Cato Institute's 14th Annual Monetary Conference, May 23,
1996.
Williamson, S.,and R. Wright, 1994. "Barter and Monetary Exchange Under
Private Information." American Economic Review, 84(1): 104_123.

Page 462
Quantity Theory of Money
Dean, E., ed., 1965. The Controversy over the Quantity Theory of Money.
Lexington, Mass.: Heath.
Judd, J.P., 1983. "The Recent Decline in Velocity: Instability in Money
Demand or Inflation?" Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San
Francisco, Spring 1983, pp. 12_19.
Monetary Freedom
White, L., 1984. Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience, Debate,

1800_1845. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Glasner, D., 1989. Free Banking and Monetary Reform. Cambridge Mass:
Cambridge University Press.
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. "A Brief History of Our Nation's
Paper Money." 1995 Annual Report, available at
http://www.frbsf.org/frbsf/pubs/annualrpt/history.html.
Electronic Payment Systems
Micro Payment Transfer Protocol is a standard proposed in November, 1995

by the WWW Consortium (W3C) for micropayments on the Internet. Its draft
is available at http://www.w3.org/hypertext/www/TR/WD-mptp.
For NetCash specification, see Medvinsky, G., and B.C. Neuman, 1993,
"NetCash: A Design for Practical Electronic Currency on the Internet," in
Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Computer and Communications
Security, November, 1993.
Flohr, U., 1996. "Electric Money." Byte, June, 1996, pp. 74_84.
The Economist. "Electronic Money: So Much for the Cashless Society."
Readers who are interested in traditional banking on the Internet, home
banking, or web banking may consult Chapter 7 of Kalakota and Whinston
(1997) mentioned above.
Internet Resources
Electronic Money Resources
Mondex FAQ is available at http://www.mondex.com/mondex/faq.htm.

For FSTC Check Imaging Information, see
http://www.fstc.org/projects/imaging.
Electronic Frontier Foundation’s E-money and privacy archive is at
http://www.eff. org/pub/Privacy/Digital_money/.
Useful links to electronic money sites maintained by Roy Davies are found at
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/emoney.html.
Electronic Banking Resource Center also has links to other sites and reading
materials. See http://www2.cob.ohio-state.edu/~richards/bankpay.htm.
Standard Electronic Transactions (SET)
SET specification is available for review at either MasterCard or Visa home

pages:
http://www.mastercard.com or http://www.visa.com
The mailing list “[email protected]” is a discussion list maintained

by CommerceNet consortium, a forum for comments and discussion about
SET. To subscribe to the set-discuss mailing list, send e- mail to:
[email protected] with a message that reads “subscribe set-discuss.”

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CHAPTER 11
Business and Policy Implications

of Electronic Commerce
Today, commerce on the Internet is frequently equated with the concept of
doing business electronically and is often promoted as a means for businesses
to lower their costs and improve their efficiency in various stages of business
transactions. However, electronic commerce goes beyond the mere adoption of
new Internet technology for conducting business according to traditional
practices. Electronic commerce operates in a new electronic marketplace
where the very players, products and processes are fundamentally changed.
Drawing on insights from previous chapters, this chapter's goal is to
summarize what previous chapters have advanced: the key to understanding
and exploiting electronic commerce is to recognize it as a market mechanism
in which all components of a market interact and must be analyzed
collectively.
With this understanding, this chapter evaluates a number of factors that
traditionally impact costs and efficiency. These include the size of the firm,
product quality, reputation, consumer access to information and advertising.
These and other business factors are intertwined with policy issues. The
discussion expands to include the impact of electronic commerce on policies
governing new market protection measures, such as digital copyrights, mass
advertising on the Internet, and pricing strategies for digital products. The
discussion of each topic highlights market aspects, which are consistently
Page 464
ignored in current debates, and raises issues that will require tackling in the
future as electronic commerce continues to grow.
11.1. Internet as the Great Equalizer
In physical markets, the size of a firm impacts its chances for success in a
variety of ways. For example, large firms and corporations often have better
access to the capital market than do small firms. Economies of scale often
result in increased profits for large companies. And the widespread name
recognition of large, established firms is a valuable asset in itself. Such
advantages—for example, of General Motors over small-scale car
manufacturers—translate into a dominance in physical markets.
The very different environment of electronic commerce has raised questions
about whether size will have the same impact in this new marketplace. The
virtual existence of companies on the Internet, for instance, makes it difficult
to distinguish physical differences in their size. From this fact alone, a notion
has developed that the electronic marketplace is the great equalizer, which
accommodates big and small firms on equal terms.
The Virtual Equality
In a physical market, consumers easily recognize the difference between a

posh department store and a discount store by their physical appearances.
However, in the virtual world, physical appearance fails to convey information
about the size and hence relative market position of the store. On the Internet,
anyone with a web page can look as good as a large corporation and can in fact
provide the same level of technical assistance and customer support through
automated programs. Internet users do not know for certain with whom they
are interacting. In fact, a popular cartoon about the net claims that "no one
knows you are a dog on the Internet" (see fig. 8.6). Although there are means
to learn about identities, the Internet provides a reasonable level of anonymity,
and such
Page 465
anonymity can be useful in social communications, eliminating certain
prejudices when gender-neutral aliases and pronouns are used. But will such
an advantage translate into an economic benefit for companies?
The Reputational Transfer
Contrary to the popular vision of virtual equality that paints the future of
electronic commerce as a market where the distinction between large and
small becomes moot, there is ample evidence that large firms may dominate
electronic commerce. First of all, a firm with an established reputation in
physical markets may be able to transfer this reputation to the virtual market.
To the extent that the company has established a reputation as a dominant and
large firm in physical markets, this reputation transfer represents a form of size
advantage in electronic commerce as well.
You can already see evidence of this in electronic commerce. During the first
stage of market growth, small, entrepreneurial firms dominated the Internet
scene. However, a reversal of fortune has become evident in many product
markets. For example, Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com), the largest and
most successful online bookstore, faces stiff competition from established
booksellers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders (http://www.borders.com). In
another example, Netscape was the early entrant to the web-browser market,
holding almost 90 percent of the market until the giant in the physical world
entered. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has reduced Netscape Navigator's
market share by 20 percent in just one year since its introduction. The question
of quality—for example, downloading speed, ease of use, and features—often
becomes secondary to Microsoft's reputation as the leader in physical markets.
In addition, Microsoft can bundle its browser with its operating system
software so that new users inadvertently become its customers. (For a
comprehensive browser comparison, see C-Net's information page at
http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Browsers /index.html.)
Other firms native to the Internet will soon face challenges from physically
large firms as well. For example, VeriSign (http://www.verisign.com) has been
Page 466
the pioneer in certification services. But, the U.S. Postal Service
(http://www.usps.gov) intends to enter the certification business, which
requires verification technologies and the public's trust in a third party.
Similarly, many Internet payment services companies will have to compete
with large firms, such as national banks and Visa and MasterCard. Although
Internet-native firms have been small, innovative enterprises, their competitive
edge is being rapidly eroded as large firms with reputation, and the capital, in
physical markets enter the arena. Transferred reputation is clearly one factor
that makes size matter in electronic commerce.
Declining Average Costs and the Advantage of Size
Another reason why size will continue to matter in the electronic marketplace
stems from an economic observation of the process of competition in digital
products. A simplified competition process may take the following form.
Given that a digital product requires a large initial investment to produce the
first unit, the per-unit cost decreases as the number of units sold increases. In
other words, a digital product producer has an increasing economy of
scale—declining average costs—with respect to the number of sales.
Understandably, each firm tries to maximize its market share. For a set quality,
producers can determine the minimum number of sales needed to break even.
In the case of competition among same-quality producers, this break-even
price will be the same for all. Any price below that will increase market share,
but the firm will not break even. If the firm is large enough, and possesses
enough capital, a high-quality producer can cut its price and gain market share,
despite losses, as a temporary strategy to drive out competitors. And as the
firm's market size grows, it can further reduce its price as its average cost
declines. Contrary to the common belief that the Internet is an equalizer of
small and large firms, only firms with sizeable capital may survive a heated
competition.
Because a sizeable market share is necessary to cover the initial fixed cost of
production, the Internet as the "great equalizer" might well be a myth. A larger
firm that can invest more in quality will command a higher share of the
market. If products have the same price, a firm with higher quality will
dominate the market because consumers learn about quality and repeat
purchases.

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Product Differentiation and Size
Economies of scale operate where products are homogeneous or if consumers

regard different products as essentially the same. In some cases, products are
homogenized especially to take advantage of the economies of scale. For
example, Ford's Model T in the 1920s maintained a low price because the
automobile manufacturer relied on mass production of only one model. As the
market for automobiles grew, different models were offered that still benefited
from the economies of scale afforded by increased sales—up to a certain
ceiling. A specific car model may cost more if it is produced beyond, say,
300,000 units, because of the physical limitations of its manufacturing
facilities.
This ceiling on economies of scale may not apply to digital products, which
may not exhaust the economies of scale regardless of the market size. In this
case, where the average cost would continue to decline ad infinitum, it would
be better business sense to have one version of a product.
Some economists, observing the reproducibility of digital products, seem to
feel that this infinitely declining average cost implies that companies will steer
away from incurring the high cost of investing in new products. According to
them, digital products are affected by economies of scale, interoperabil-ity,
and standardization, all of which favor a dominant product instead of many
competing products. As a result, in their view, consumers will be forced to
accept a Model T of any digital product because it is most efficient.
In our view, consumer tastes differ, and products will be differentiated to
match consumers' preferences regardless of the efficiency. Just as mass
production technology—whose main objective is to minimize production
costs—was the essence of earlier industrial development, recent
computer-assisted manufacturing technologies have introduced the capability
for customized production of physical products, say, automobiles, at a far
smaller number with extreme model variations. Digital products, due to their
transmutability, represent a further departure from mass production of a single
average product. In addition, differentiated and niche market products can be
marketed more efficiently on the Internet through targeted e-mailing,
newsgroups, and
Page 468
discussion lists, as well as through direct consumer participation in product
development. As a result, the conventional economic model, in which firms
with declining average costs compete by lowering prices, will apply only when
products are substantially homogeneous or substitutable.
When products are highly differentiated, producers possess a degree of market
power over their market segment. To secure such market segments, smaller
firms and individuals can rely on qualities that have little to do with the size of
a firm or initial investment. For example, the value of point of view and
authority in commentaries and intellectual works cannot be adequately
represented by conventional economic modeling about costs. Having a point of
view that is valued by consumers is not a simple function of fixed costs, such
as years of education or experience. Given these other considerations, the
dominance and the reputation of a firm in electronic commerce may not
depend solely on the size or the initial investment, and producers of niche
market products may taunt the prevailing economies of scale in the electronic
marketplace.
11.2. Search Service and Its Market Implications

As mentioned earlier, the Internet is often touted as a means for firms large
and small to improve their efficiency. However, efficiency in the electronic
marketplace is critically dependent on efficiency in search activities. In
physical markets, consumers learn about products and locate sellers through a
variety of methods ranging from advertisements, word of mouth, directories
and references, and pure chance. In contrast, the vastness of the virtual
marketplace works to isolate consumers because of the lack of immediate
space. Consumers cannot simply pass and remember stores while commuting
to work. In the absence of this, search engines and online advertisements are
key to helping consumers navigate the virtual marketplace.
Page 469
Chapter 7 discussed several inadequacies of Internet search services in terms
of completeness, accuracy, relevancy, and objectivity of information. For
example, no complete listing of all Internet resources exists, and search
information is often out-dated because the World Wide Web is changing
constantly. However, the heated debate about the role of search services
revolves around two other aspects: the use of consumer information and the
commercialization of search services. Section 11.5, "Digital Products and
Pricing," discusses in more detail the policy aspects of the availability of
consumer information versus consumer privacy. This section explores the
critical role of search services in market efficiency.
First, to be efficient, search services or their databases need to remain
objective and public. Although commercial services can provide objective
information at the lowest possible price by including advertisements, proper
attention should be given to the possibility of introducing unnecessary
inefficiencies under this advertiser-supported model of business. To
understand this better, you can review examples found in mass media and
advertising.
Advertising in Broadcast Media
Television and newspapers rely on paid advertisements because it is difficult

to charge customers based on their usage and valuation. Because media
companies cannot distinguish frequent TV watchers or newspaper readers
from the occasional audience, there can only be one price for all consumers. In
the case of television, broadcasters cannot even locate their customers to bill
them individually. As a result, television programs are often considered similar
to public goods for which adequate pricing mechanisms are hard to find. To
solve the problem of billing, television broadcasters are in the business of
selling to advertisers; the (paying) customers of TV broadcasters are not the
audience but the advertisers; and their products are TV-watching consumers,
not TV programs. In this way, two separate markets—TV programs and
advertising markets—are combined via the intermediary role of broadcasters
(see a.) in fig. 11.1). This peculiar business arrangement is not due to the
characteristics of television programming or program consumption, but rather
to the way
Page 470
television signals are carried over the air. Today, cable television gives
broadcasters the capability to control their signals and monitor usage. In this
case, as depicted in b.) of figure 11.1, the two markets can be separated.
Nevertheless, the practice of advertiser-supported programming continues,
even when consumers pay for subscription.
Figure 11.1 TV broadcasting and advertising.

One primary argument in favor of advertising in all broadcast media is the
lower resulting price. Newspapers with advertisements would cost more, if
they were able to exist at all, which might prevent many readers from
subscribing. The quality of television might suffer if broadcasters could not
rely on advertising revenues, again if they were able to exist at all. But, the
argument that consumers get high-quality free products because of
advertisements is weak on two accounts. First, these products are not free
because consumers pay in the form of watching commercials or reading
advertisements, for which no adequate compensation is paid. Second,
television programs are manufactured to maximize audience—the number of
eyeballs sold to advertisers—not to satisfy consumers' preferences. As a result,
TV programs usually cater to the lowest common denominator—sex and
violence—to maximize audience size. Program line-ups also reflect the need to
maximize audience flow from program to program, and the need to dominate
the ratings game when advertiser-sponsored audience measurements occur
during the sweeps period.

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When unrelated product markets are artificially linked, optimization cannot be
expected to prevail. The objectives in the television programming market will
only occasionally match the objectives of the advertising market. In the
advertising-supported TV market, the type and quality of programs are
determined not by consumer preferences but by the incentive to maximize
profits from advertising. As a result, TV executives choose programs with
little consideration for consumer demand. Similar inefficiencies will be
observed in advertiser-supported search services.
Search Engines and Advertising
Search engine providers that use advertising are intermediaries, just like TV
networks, that sell access to consumers or consumer information to advertisers.
Their search databases are like television programs that attract an audience.
However, why would a narrow-cast medium like the Internet need a business
model that evolved to address the peculiar problem of selling over-the-air
entertainment? Unlike in mass media markets, Internet markets for content and
advertisements can be separated. In the advertisement market, sellers
(advertisers) can sell their products directly to consumers. Consumers will be
paid for reading advertisements. In the search market, consumers will pay
service providers directly for the information. In either market, product
selection and prices will be based on preferences and costs relevant to either
advertisements or search information.
Some consumers prefer not to pay for search services and are willing to
tolerate advertising banners that are presented with search results. Others are
frustrated by the delay caused by graphic banners, which often maintain
surreptitious connections with advertising servers. Even as bandwidth becomes
cheaper, congestion will remain due to the ever-increasing size of content. In
addition to the congestion problem, essential problems remain regarding
advertiser-supported search services.
First, as in broadcasting, advertisers cannot be sure of the effectiveness of
advertising. Second, while an advertiser-based free service (like TV) or a
flat-fee billing system (like newspapers) may seem to be a cost-effective and
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equitable way of providing services, this is not the case. Some consumers are
discouraged from using the service because of the distortion introduced by
advertising. Others use the service beyond an efficient level, resulting in the
abuse or waste of the resource because it is free or cheap to use.
The commercialization of search services best exemplifies how
broadcast-based business models are commonly applied to electronic
commerce without serious consideration of the implications. This section's
discussion is not intended to press for a usage-based fee structure for search
services, nor to advocate publicly supporting search services. The discussion
does, however, demonstrate that the Internet's technological differences
warrant a reexamination of business models based on mass communications
media.
Digital Cataloging Guidelines
The efficiency of Internet searches will ultimately depend on web pages

providing consistent product descriptions of themselves. An increasing array
of products are digitized and sold in electronic commerce, beyond digital
versions of paper-based products. Product descriptions in these cases should be
more than mere descriptions of physical appearance because digital products
essentially consist of ones and zeros. Nevertheless, little effort is being exerted
to set standards and guidelines for digital cataloging. Two aspects of digital
cataloging are relevant for electronic commerce: content description and
search interfacing.
Content Description
Catalogs list and describe items available for sale or for other purposes, such
as in the case of library catalogs. A good catalog not only describes a product
succinctly but also provides a useful classification. Once such catalogs exist
for all web resources, the efficiency of Internet searches will be greatly
enhanced.
No guidelines or agreed-upon standards exist for digital catalogs. Digital
libraries are developing digital catalog standards but these are based on
conventional methods (that is, digital library catalogs are based on non-digital
library catalogs with a simple addition about file types). The catalog industry
has been
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working on electronic catalog standards in connection with CommerceNet
since 1994 (http://www.commerce.net/work/taskforces/catalogs). Electronic
catalogs refer to electronic versions of product catalogs that producers and
retailers offer consumers for ordering. Although one goals of its task force is to
develop a framework to define products using taxonomies, the task force has
focused narrowly on the question of search interfaces and architecture.
Because of the sheer number of web resources, it is easier for content
producers to provide content descriptions when products are made than to rely
on Internet search agents visiting web pages after they are made. When
geographic data is collected, it is conventional to compile meta-data describing
the data; for all physical databases, producers compile codebooks without
which they are often useless. The same logic should apply to web resources
and all digital products.
Search Interfaces
Once adequate product descriptions exist for all digital products, they must be
presented on demand to searchers, who may use a variety of search methods or
desire to access multiple catalogs for comparison. The CommerceNet Cat-alog
Working Group is developing such an open and versatile electronic catalog
system. Although the group is developing the framework for the catalog
industry, such as virtual mail-order firms, it can be used for electronic
commerce in general.
One of the group's proposed systems utilizes smart catalogs and virtual
catalogs (Keller, 1997). Smart catalogs are product descriptions provided by
producers. Virtual catalogs are maintained by intermediaries (retailers) and
provide interfaces between consumers who seek information and producers
who offer (smart) catalogs. Under the virtual catalog system, consumers need
not interact with each producer to perform multi-vendor comparisons. Virtual
catalogs allow producers control over their own catalogs, and offer dynamic
and up-to-date catalog information. Precisely such a system is needed for
Internet searches because of the large number of content vendors, the speed at
which content changes, and the efficiency of intermediaries in maintaining
quality and measuring and billing for usage.
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11.3. Copyright Protection Standards

As mentioned in Chapter 5, electronic commerce requires not only a
reexamination of basic business models and assumptions, as seen earlier, but
also requires basic revisions of policy. Efforts are being made to amend or
reinvent copyright laws to suit digital products and electronic commerce. The
practicality and viability of any scheme will ultimately be determined by
product characteristics, consumer usage behavior, and economic efficiency.
Copyright enforcement efforts are needed when an author's market is eroded
by unauthorized copies. But in some cases, the author's rights can be better
protected by market-oriented mechanisms than by legal measures.
In general, current copyright debate revolves around the revision of existing
laws to adapt to the new technological environment. However, the
characteristics and usage pattern of digital products may be sufficiently
different from paper-based products to require a fundamental shift in
protecting the market for new, digital products. For example, the reproductive
right features prominently in copyright law because reproduction via variant
technologies of the printing press has been the primary mode of production,
distribution, and usage in the paper-based world. In the digital world, however,
reproduction often occurs for technical reasons, without the intention to
duplicate and distribute. Sometimes, using a digital file may not even involve
reading the document. For example, a user may want to obtain a graph
summarizing a database; the database itself is never physically read or viewed
except by the graphing program. Such differences must be considered as
laying the foundation for the digital age begins with a fundamental shift in
copyright protection. If current copyright law is a product of the invention of
printing presses, the new digital copyright law should account for the changes
that digital technologies bring into the paper-based world.
Important issues remain to be addressed. Missing in the current copyright
debate is how the determination of copyright affects the pricing of digital
products and government policies. A copyright payment is the royalty paid to
the author to compensate for the cost of the production. Because copyright

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payment is made for each reproduction of the original, the copyright payment
is the cost of reproduction. For this reason, variable costs for digital products
will not be zero even when the costs of duplicating a digital file may come
close to zero. As a result, the marginal cost of a digital product will vary with
copyright payment, and the efficient price of a digital product will largely be a
function of royalty payments, which account for a substantial portion of
manufacturing costs. To see how the definition of copyright affects
government policy, consider that, if a sale is made for a digital product, the
income from the sale may be treated as an ordinary sale or as a royalty
payment from a reproduction. The same income, then, will be governed by
different federal income tax laws regarding sales income or royalty income,
which are taxed at different rates.
The real impact of copyright modifications will be judged in the marketplace.
Content owners' primary concern is the loss of revenue due to unauthorized
reproductions and sales. Where revenue opportunities do not exist, copyright
enforcement is only symbolic. Similarly, if there is no incentive to reproduce
and distribute without authorization, the cost and effort expended to secure
copyrights would not be economically justified. Products can be designed with
this in mind. Many digital products can be personalized so as to make them
useless for any other person. Highly time-sensitive information soon turns
worthless, other than for archiving purposes. And finally, some products can
be delivered interactively and in a secure manner, similar to stock market data
distributed via private networks. Making products insensitive to reproduction
and resale is an alternative to the vexing problem of securing digital copyright.
11.4. The Use of Consumer Information

Because there are sizable gains to be made from refining consumer demand
information, collecting information about consumer preferences is widely
promoted, and electronic commerce provides a unique opportunity for this.
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But, although this information is clearly helpful to the sellers and researchers,
a standard must be established to protect consumers. Presently, information
collectors need only give notification and disclosure to consumers before using
such consumer information.
Rather than relying on regulatory solutions, however, innovative concepts are
being tested in electronic commerce. One new idea is to give consumers the
right to sell information about themselves. As discussed in section 8.3, this
market-based solution turns personal information into a marketable
commodity. Many online services are offered in return for divulging personal
information. In this case, the price for that information will be equal to the
value of the service offered. Some consumers may use the service heavily,
implying a high price for their information. Others may give out their
information for a service they seldom use, signaling a low value for their
personal information. Going beyond reporting names and addresses,
consumers may be willing to sell all types of consumption data if the price is
right. In a way, consumers will become information sellers by participating in
market research or focus groups.
At least in one sense, selling personal consumption data may be detrimental to
consumer welfare. In electronic commerce, such data will be directly linked to
purchasing and price negotiation. With demand known, sellers may refuse to
lower prices below a level that they think is a consumer's valuation. However,
rather than going back to a market with imperfect demand and inferior product
quality, the market may be able to produce an equitable and efficient result.
For example, the potentially higher sale price can be partly compensated by a
higher payment for personal information. This also demonstrates a reason
consumer information may have to be priced and traded in the market. A slew
of economic questions arise regarding prices and the efficiency in such a
market. Perhaps the vigor evidenced in the debate on privacy and anonymity
among legal scholars, government officials, and free-speech activists might
guide economists to this task in the future.
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11.5. Digital Products and Pricing

In this nascent field of research in electronic commerce, economists already
have developed multiple—often contradictory—theories of how digital
products should be distributed, sold and priced. Some argue for bundling (a
sort of flat fee) while others argue for micropayments (a sort of usage-based
pricing). Each has some evidence for justification and mathematical as well as
economic proofs (see Chapter 8 for more information on pricing and
bundling). However, this section cautions against applying existing models of
physical markets to the electronic marketplace. Those who see electronic
commerce as simply an alternative marketing channel find spurious
similarities between digital products and their physical counterparts, and argue
that electronic commerce pricing will be no different from physical markets
where vendors prefer bundling and subscription. Although some products and
services will indeed be better served by bundling and subscription, this
practice will be only a small part of how digital products will be sold in
electronic commerce. Instead, the changing nature of information goods and
market processes will demand more flexible distribution and pricing schemes,
such as microproducts and micropayments.
Bundling and Subscription
In the physical world, information products are often bundled and sold on by
subscription, and that observation has convinced many that the same practice
may be adequately applied to pricing digital products. Witness the way a
newspaper is delivered: all sorts of news and information in a one-size-fits-all
package. Cable services, on the other hand, are priced as a tier instead of as a
la carte options. Bundles of this type are convenient because precise
information about consumer demand for each component or between
components is not
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required; consumers can also average out the fluctuation in product quality and
their own demand; and billing and payment are simplified. Bundling therefore
appears to be an appropriate product selection strategy for many digital
products, at least for digital information products. Consequently, some argue
that information products should be sold just as newspapers and cable services
are sold: bundled and by subscription.
Although these advantages do favor bundling, a more fundamental need for
bundling newspapers and magazines is technological in nature. In the physical
market, a payment mechanism suitable for purchasing a small portion of a
newspaper simply does not exist. Also, the consumer's cost of disposing of the
unwanted portion of the product is small. Therefore, the economic costs will
also be negligible for any waste generated by bundling. For digital products,
however, neither the disposal cost nor the delivery cost is zero. If a person
subscribes to a digital newspaper but only reads a small portion of what is
delivered, he is paying for the delivery and storage of something he does not
consume. In addition, an indiscriminate broadcasting of digital newspapers
will tax the delivery network, exacerbating congestion. Pricing digital products
need not follow models used in physical markets when, in electronic
commerce, microproducts can be produced according to demand and billed in
an efficient manner based on usage.
Another questionable assumption is that physical newspapers and online
newspapers are the same product. In fact, online newspapers may be totally
different from their paper counterparts. Online newspapers offer consumers a
different set of characteristics: interactivity, customization, search, links, and
storage and reproduction mechanisms. These characteristics, in turn, result in
different uses. An online newspaper may, for example, be linked to computer
programs that input and analyze news items for investment decisions,
automatic dissemination to colleagues, and so on. You can no longer assume
that online and paper versions are indeed the same commodity.
The simple fact that consumers pay for a basic cable service, which is not
much different from what is available for free, indicates that cable services are
different from over-the-air television. In addition to better signal quality, cable
television services offer more channels 24 hours a day and access to
specialized

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programming. In the same way, Internet dissemination of television programs
will exhibit further differences—perhaps even more fundamental ones. For
example, cable television enables broadcasters to charge consumers directly
for programs instead of relying on advertisers (for example, paid movie
channels and pay-per-view services). Although cable operators have not fully
exploited this possibility, online programming may indeed be sold a la carte,
not by channel, but by unbundled program. Furthermore, advertising may be
separated from content and sold as a separate product. As discussed in section
11.2, "Search Service and Its Market Implications," the peculiarity of
over-the-air broadcasting necessitated inserting commercials into programs.
But remote-control devices and split screens enable viewers to switch channels
to avoid commercials. With VCR and digital television sets equipped with
filtering devices, zapping through commercials will become even easier. Faced
with a scarcely passive audience, advertising based on mass media is set for a
wholesale revision.
Once formerly linked products are sold separately, proper prices for
commercials and contents must be determined. Newspaper sellers claim that
their advertising revenue helps lower the consumer price of their newspapers.
Television networks claim that, without commercials, the quality of their
programs would suffer. However, the value of a TV program is calculated by
the advertiser's willingness to pay instead of the viewers' willingness to pay.
Costs incurred by consumers are ignored, such as the disutility of watching
commercials or flipping through advertisements as well as the waste of
resources. What, then, is a direct price of a consumer watching an ad, or a
30-minute sitcom? Economists will have ample opportunity to ponder the
prices of goods that were formerly considered public goods with no
established market prices.
Buying a bundled digital product is similar to paying a flat subscription fee.
Therefore, problems similar to those encountered with bundling exist for
flat-fee subscription schemes used to sell digital products. Just as bundling
does not account for variations in consumer tastes, charging a flat fee also
ignores differences in usage, and often results in inefficient resource
allocation. Since America Online, Inc. (http://www.aol.com) changed its fee
schedule to a flat-fee system, its network has been severely congested,
increasing consumers'
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average waiting time. One factor favoring a flat-fee system is that users often
cannot control the amount of connection time. For example, if someone sends
a lengthy e-mail or posts a long message on a UseNet newsgroup, the receiver
must pay for the connection time required to download the files, which often
turn out to be useless or unwanted. Under the new system, AOL's heavy users,
who used to pay more than the new flat fee of $19.95 a month, reap the benefit
of the new flat-fee billing system, whereas occasional users, whose payment
used to be below the flat fee, are at a disadvantage. Besides this distribution
problem, access time has increased by two to three times in the case of AOL,
causing widespread congestion. A more efficient use of the resource can be
achieved if fees reflect the actual cost of service or the usage (see Chapter 3
for more information on efficient infrastructure pricing).
Despite these inefficiencies, flat fees and subscriptions to bundled services are
widely used because sellers can simplify billing and consumers can vary their
usage without worrying about additional charges. This type of pricing strategy
often works well with standardized products such as newspapers and TV
programs. Consumers receive basically the same product, while disposing of
the product's unwanted portions. But digital products can be highly customized
based on revealed consumer information. Such differentiated products will, of
course, require differentiated or non-uniform prices. Also, consumers with
special tastes for only a small portion of the bundled product can be better
served by unbundling, where there is a portion at a smaller fee. The
subscription rate for cable television service, for example, is stagnant, around
60 percent, and is expected to remain under 70 percent. In other words, more
than 30 percent of TV households find the subscription for bundled cable
service unattractive. Offering a la carte channels is difficult due to the lack of
sophisticated switching equipment and network for cable services. Similar
difficulties, however, do not exist in electronic commerce. Thus, while
bundling will be dominant for digital products—because any single digital
document is a bundle of multimedia files—an excessive emphasis on bundling
often leads to a misleading strategy of duplicating the inefficient pricing
schemes used in physical markets.
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To summarize, many similarities are shared by two forms of information
products—digital versions (for example, online magazines) and physical
versions (for example, paper-based magazines). Such outward similarities have
encouraged many economists to conclude that pricing in electronic commerce
will resemble the pricing of newspapers, magazines, and cable services.
Although the current trend in today's electronic commerce supports such
intuition, this has more to do with the characteristics of today's sellers and
products than with the nature of digital products and the electronic
marketplace. As long as sellers see electronic commerce only as a simple
extension of their physical products, this trend may continue. However,
tomorrow's electronic commerce, with numerous microproducers and
information-based products, will certainly demand different economic models
to guide business decisions.
Today, for example, a personal investment adviser or four years of college
remain beyond the reach of many consumers who have no need for all their
services or no funds for all the courses. In the virtual world, personal service
providers will be available for multiple transactions as well as for one-time
use. The enabling factor for these services to be provided is the lowered
threshold, in terms of number and value of transactions. The fragmentation, or
unbundling, of products and services will enable need-based transactions
whereas today's investment advisers can justify only large clients because of
the need to recoup fixed costs and operating expenses. By adding unbundled
services and usage-based prices, service providers can increase sales while
serving more consumers. Similarly, college education today consists of four
years of continuous enrollment. When education is virtualized, need-based
education and training will be available for specific topics and skills.
Consumers will be able to enroll in a specific course to get a certificate of
completion. As these examples illustrate, electronic commerce is indeed a new
way of delivering products and services, which requires a more flexible pricing
scheme than the familiar flat-fee subscription.

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Unbundling and Micropayments
An important prerequisite of unbundling and mixed bundling is the designing

of a micropayment system suitable for pricing the resulting microproducts and
microbundles. Fees for bundled products often are large enough to be paid by
credit cards and checks, and some economists argue that microproducts and
micropayments discussed in connection with electronic currency will become
largely unimportant. If transaction costs can be made low enough to handle
even sub-dollar payments, why should digital product sellers be limited to
accepting credit card payments and other large-scale payment methods? To
justify a large bill, consumers are often required to purchase multiple products
or a bundle with unwanted products. Micropayments are as essential to
electronic commerce as product customization.
Micropayments and unbundling will be a natural response to a growing
abundance of customized microproducts. You can see the potential sources
and applications of microproducts in many different areas. Take, for example,
traditional media. Newspapers, magazines, and TV programs are intermediary
services that collect, edit, and distribute materials from various sources, often
packaged in a bundled program or newspaper. However, there is no reason
information should be distributed only via a centralized distribution system. In
other words, the New York Times or CNN may not be the sole gatekeepers of
news, ideas, information and knowledge. The Internet is a natural dispersed
information channel for small, occasional sales. Its unique interactive
capability also makes everyone a potential guest columnist on the net.
Consumers will pay for these microproducts not by subscription but by
micropayments.
Other sources of information microproducts exist because the pervasiveness of
these information snippets—the new commodity of the 21st century—is the
hallmark of the information age. Interactions among market agents generate
new types of information goods. For example, each interaction between a
consumer and a web page results in information about agents (for example
consumer information). Product descriptions can be broken down into smaller
components and sold individually. A market exists even for some of the
millions of e-mail messages exchanged today. Finally, new commodities
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exchanged in the electronic marketplace will include many physical products
made smart by applying intelligence and technology: smart automobiles, smart
furniture, smart appliances, and so on. Just as you buy a can of motor oil or a
replacement light bulb, consumers will want to purchase a new control routine
for smart automobiles, an improved temperature diagnostic subroutine for
smart boilers, and so on. If these smart products use open and interoperable
standards, there will be no need to rely on proprietary, expensive, all-in-one
software to install and update them. Instead, small shareware products will be
readily available over the Internet. Microproducts and micropayments are
essential in achieving such a vision.
Micropayments also play an important role in calculating equitable payments
to component owners of a bundled product. In the physical world, the music
industry has developed what is probably the most sophisticated copyright
payment scheme through ASCAP and BMI (as discussed in Chapter 5).
However, their payment schedule still depends on the estimated popularity of
each copyrighted material played on radio and other media, and this popularity
cannot be measured accurately. Some popular artists may be underpaid
whereas others are overpaid. A bundled sale of digital products faces similar
problems. Consumers may not view or use some components, while heavily
using other portions or features. If the seller charges a flat fee for the bundled
product, how would it distribute the revenue to the various copyright owners?
Without actual usage data, a precise allocation will be difficult or inequitable.
However, because the electronic marketplace has the technology to monitor
usage, a more efficient revenue distribution will be based on individual
sales—for which micropayments are needed.
Micropayments and Product Quality
Another motivation for developing microproducts and micropayments stems

from the need to assure product quality. A long-term subscription of bundled
digital products may be sufficient to guarantee quality based on the reputation
of the seller. However, reputation has to be developed after repeated
purchases. If sellers know, on the other hand, that the market will end soon, or
they are
Page 484
short-run players it is profitable to cheat by selling low-quality products at
high-quality prices. Knowing this, would consumers be willing to buy a
product from unknown sellers? This problem is magnified if buyers are
required to commit to a long-term subscription or to pay for a large bundle of
unknown quality. It is unrealistic to assume that all sellers have reputation or
to require costly mechanisms that verify and guarantee product quality.
Instead, as discussed in Chapter 4, recent research in contract theory offers
some positive evidence that short-term sales based on micropayments may
indeed produce higher quality than subscription and bundling. When products
are homogeneous, it pays to learn about the product's quality because the cost
of learning is spent only once. If consumers pay for learning, the benefits
continue as long as the consumers buy the same product. An intermediary or a
dealer can sample a product to find out its quality before committing to a
contract to buy a large quantity. In electronic commerce, the problem is more
complex for at least two reasons:
● Products are differentiated or customized such that quality may vary for
each and every version of a product. Unlike the case of repeated
purchases of a homogeneous product, the dealer or consumer must
verify quality for all products. For example, the quality of timely
information (a series of differentiated products) may change from time
to time so that yesterday's quality does not guarantee today's or
tomorrow's quality.
● The value of microproducts may not justify the cost of learning and
verifying quality. In the case of high-value products, such as
automobiles or jewelry, consumers spend time and effort to learn about
quality. Intermediaries in these product areas often find it cost efficient
to invest in the skills of recognizing quality (for example, expert
knowledge of gemstones). However, if the product is of low quality,
such cost may not be justified to the consumer. And intermediaries who
deal with microdocuments in electronic commerce may not have any
incentive to verify the quality of each microproduct.
With this in mind, will an intermediary or a consumer be willing to purchase a
product online? What optimal payment scheme or contract will result

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in the highest possible quality? Subscription has been touted as a possible
remedy for low quality because consumers discover the level of quality based
on repeated purchases. But not all products can be sold by subscription; the
market for information will be full of microproducts sold by microsellers who
cannot use this mechanism. Bundling is also suggested as a solution, but it
may actually lower quality if most consumers use only a portion of the
product. An intermediary may be able to establish a selling procedure based on
subscription and bundling by linking numerous microsellers and micro-buyers,
as discussed in Chapter 4. But the intermediary still is not able to determine
quality and does not have sufficient incentive to investigate all products. An
enforceable contract may be the mechanism that will establish an incentive for
content producers to maintain high quality, as the following scenarios
illustrate.
Suppose Alice is a digital product reseller who brokers hundreds of individual
shareware programmers. These programmers send their products to Alice, who
lists them on her web page. The following optional purchase arrangements are
possible:
● Commission—Alice signs no contract with her suppliers and pays each
programmer only after sales are made to consumers. Under this
consignment scenario, if Alice accepts all potential shareware
programmers and if many of their products are of low quality, she will
soon lose her reputation as well as customers. She clearly needs some
type of mechanism to ensure high quality.
● Complete Contract—Alice writes a contract with each shareware
programmer that contains complete specifications regarding quality.
Under this scenario, it is still costly for Alice to examine all products,
and programmers have an incentive to cheat. This problem is magnified
if the programmer is not a long-run player. Alice still faces the problem
of losing customers. If the contract specifies only the quantity or the
term for renewal, but not the quality, programmers still have an
incentive to cheat because Alice is committed to buying the products
while the contract lasts, regardless of quality.
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● Short-Term Option Contract—Alice writes an incomplete contract that
does not specify quality, and promises to purchase only one shareware
program from each programmer. The contract stipulates that Alice will
continue to represent the programmer as long as she does not receive a
complaint from a customer. In essence, this type of contract establishes
a short-term relationship with optional future transactions. The
incompleteness is not in quality, which is difficult to define, but in
quantity, because the contract leaves future sales unknown.
An incomplete, short-term contract forces Alice's suppliers to maintain high
quality for fear of not being represented. Therefore, the contract works
similarly to reputation: the seller (a programmer) is afraid of losing customers
(Alice). Whereas reputation takes a long time to develop, however, a
short-term option contract works more quickly because the term of sale is
short-term. A subscription-based pricing scheme aims at building reputation
over a long period while the possibility of terminating subscriptions
encourages sellers to maintain quality. However, because quality can vary
during the subscription period and subscribers are often unable to make
immediate threats, this is inferior to a solution that does not require buyers any
long-term obligation. For consumers, buying a microproduct is one such
arrangement—which is similar to an incomplete short-term contract that
enables Alice to impose quality on her suppliers.
Now, suppose Bob is a customer. From his point of view, an incomplete,
short-term contract is the same as buying only what he needs from the array of
products Alice offers. Bundling would mean that Bob is committed to buying a
number of products, some of which may not be of high quality. Therefore, an
efficient contract should allow Bob an option to terminate his patronage
immediately if he is not satisfied with one product. In this way, microproducts
and associated micropayments are essential for intermediaries and consumers
to resolve the quality uncertainty in electronic commerce.
Incomplete contracts of this type occur frequently in real life. Traditionally,
the incompleteness is explained by the cost in spelling out all possibilities of a
transaction (transaction costs), or by the inability of the parties to predict or
Page 487
recognize all contingencies (bounded rationality). A third reason, recognized
recently, is that an incomplete contract may be superior to complete contracts
(strategic ambiguity) (Bernheim and Whinston, 1997). Often an incomplete
contract results in a first-best outcome when some contract variables are
non-verifiable, such as the quality of shareware in the preceding example.
Although the literature on reputation asserts that quality can be maintained
only if purchases are repeated over a long period between long-term players,
strategic ambiguity hints at the importance of strategic, dynamic, short-term
relationships. Micropayments and unbundling—and software applets—would
then produce better-quality products than do subscription and bundling for
digital products.
Information Products and Economics
When talking about digital or information products, economists typically focus

on newspapers, magazines, and television programs. Although they are
familiar commodities, information products have largely been neglected by
formal economic analysts. To analyze a digital product market, the economics
of information may have to evolve as a coherent body of models that
specifically consider varied forms of information being converted to
commodities, the production of such goods, and the valuation and uses of these
products. Such a model can better guide producers and policy makers in, for
example, determining a proper framework for digital copyright and pricing.
The ultimate question is whether we can treat information goods as we do
physical goods. Already, information products appear to vex many economists
trying to determine their production costs and consumer valuation. Currently,
information and knowledge play an important role in at least two areas of
economics. First, technology and research and development have been
regarded as the engine of growth since the Industrial Revolution two centuries
ago. Thus, information and technology appear to be the most important
variables in growth theory. However, growth theory often takes technology as
a given, neglecting the way it is created in the first place. Instead, it is
customary to treat a technological development as an exogenous
shock—something that

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just happens. When a model considers technology to be determined within the
system (for example through R&D activities), it is concerned with the level of
investments—the decision to allocate fixed investments. After the amount of
investment is determined, the level of technological development is also
determined. Therefore, technology plays a secondary role, although its
importance is somehow recognized.
Information and knowledge also play an important role in the economics of
information and uncertainty. In this area of economics, information is a signal
that may improve the quality of knowledge about products, competitors, or
buyers. Better information is a signal that has better quality—one that
produces a finer partition of uncertain states of the world. The information, as
a signal, merely helps to refine the process of transactions. Information in the
sense of its everyday usage—as a commodity such as books, databases, news-
papers and other intellectual properties—is often neglected by economists.
The primary difficulty in the economic analysis of information goods stems
from an inadequate understanding of what information is and how we use it as
a commodity. The way information and technology are used defies the normal,
comfortable economic analysis in which a predictable and consistent result (a
static equilibrium) is coveted. To obtain such a stable solution, a function, be it
a cost function or a growth function, must exhibit a tendency to settle down,
like a U-shaped average cost curve or the law of diminishing returns. On the
contrary, the technological process often shows a sudden departure, or a
cumulative or exponential growth, or an increasing return, making it difficult
to predict the result of an R&D project. Another frustrating factor is that
information and intellectual activities, once created, have no limit in
reproduction; they are not a scarce resource whose allocation must be
determined by a careful weighing of different uses and needs. Furthermore,
many information goods fall under the category of public goods, whose
producers are not adequately remunerated. To better understand the economic
effects of information, future research must focus on how information is
created and consumed. Electronic commerce presents an ideal environment for
study because technology will make it possible to measure the use of
information goods and enable an adequate compensation scheme.
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11.6. Taxation and the Future of Electronic

Commerce
In the United States, taxes on Internet transactions have become the target of
state and local efforts to increase revenues. Although federal governments
prefer no new taxes in electronic commerce, a powerful argument for levying
state and local taxes exists because transactions that are now taxed migrate to
the Internet, leaving governments with a reduced tax base. To at least maintain
the current level of tax revenues, state and local governments need to figure
out how to apply existing rules of taxation to electronic transactions. Although
discussion in this section mostly relates to the U.S. experience, similar
situations are found globally.
Various governments' initial efforts to tax Internet commercial activities have
resulted in numerous instances in which even the basic definitions of sales and
use tax regulations have been found inadequate. Even the distinction between
sales tax and income tax becomes unclear when business is conducted on the
Internet. But most of all, the fluidity of online taxable entities makes it difficult
to establish at any one time what is being taxed, who should be taxed, and who
can impose taxes.
Taxable Item
If you attempt to apply existing tax laws to electronic commerce, the first task
at hand is to determine which digital products are taxable under which tax
mechanisms—sales tax, income tax, royalty tax, and so on. In the U.S., most
state sales and use tax laws are based on the sale and sale price of some
tangible personal property. Use tax is levied when the property is used to
generate a service, such as when a building or a machinery is rented or leased.
Tangible personal property is defined as "personal property that can be seen,
weighed, measured, felt, or touched or that is perceptible to the senses in any
other manner" (Texas Sales and Use Tax Definition, Sec. 151.005). If you
adhere to this definition, most digital products, as well as many types of
services, are excluded.
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To extend taxation into the digital domain, some state laws specifically define
computer programs and many types of services, for example information
services, as taxable. But such ad-hoc measures become infinitely haphazard as
electronic commerce grows and a typical transaction includes a wide range of
products and services, such as software, hardware, and technical service.
Digital files, although they all look similar, may be fundamentally different
products—for example, electronic house keys, digital currency, weather
information, computer programs, concert tickets, medical advice, and so on.
Clearly, an adequate solution entails simplifying existing tax laws instead of
complicating them further by extending them and applying them on an ad-hoc
basis.
Taxes on Access
In the absence of clear definitions, the first stage of a potentially wide-reaching

tax war is already being fought with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISPs
may be subject to sales tax if they are defined as a service liable for such tax
(for example, as information service providers). They also may be subject to
telecommunications tax, which is applied to communication service providers.
Whether the definition of sales tax applies will ultimately be tested in court.
However, the levying of access fees on ISPs as telecommunications service
providers has become a hotly disputed issue (ISA, 1996). Although the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) in 1983 exempted ISPs from paying
access charges, the issue has not died. The FCC's argument was, in short, that
ISPs are not common carriers like long-distance telephone companies (which
pay access charges to local phone companies), but provide enhanced services,
such as information provision, which are exempted from telecommunications
tax under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Regional Bell operating companies, known collectively as local exchange
carriers (LECs), hold a different opinion. They petitioned the FCC in 1997 to
be allowed to levy local access charges on ISPs because, LECs argue, ISPs
engage in the same type of business as long-distance carriers that pay
per-minute access charges for each long-distance call that goes through an
LEC's

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local network. Unlike long distance carriers, however, ISPs pay only per-line
fees regardless of their total usage of the infrastructure. Internet connections by
ISP subscribers occupy telephone circuits longer than do voice calls,
increasing congestion in a network built to accommodate the lower average
calling time for voice communication. The traffic generated by ISPs puts a
strain on LECs' local exchange infrastructure, necessitating more investments
to maintain a satisfactory level of service. Long-distance carriers share such
investment costs by paying per-minute charges, and so should ISPs, LECs
argue.
Complicating this picture is the growing popularity of Internet telephony, or
using the Internet for voice, fax, and videoconferencing. Begun only in 1995,
some 500,000 users have downloaded Vocaltec's software
(http://www.vocaltec.com) for Internet telephony (Migdal and Taylor, 1997).
Leading web browser vendors also have introduced client software to facilitate
talking on the Internet (see "Internet Resources" at the end of this chapter).
When national Internet access providers (see Chapter 3) offer voice and fax
services on the Internet, they become long-distance carriers. In fact, the three
long-distance carriers—AT&T, MCI, and Sprint—are the major backbone
service providers for the Internet and also offer Internet services to consumers.
If a voice call is transmitted through their Internet services, they need not pay
access charges to LECs. But when the same call goes through the telephone
network, LECs collect usage-based access charges, for example six cents out
of the ten cents a minute for a typical long distance call (Migdal and Taylor,
1997).
Whether Internet traffic benefits outweigh the harm to LECs' business is in
dispute. According to a study commissioned by the Internet Access Coalition
(http://internetaccess.org)—whose members include Internet service providers,
computer and software manufacturers, and information service
companies—revenues in 1996 from Internet traffic far outstripped the
spending required to accommodate that traffic (IAC, 1997). While revenues
are growing for LECs and ISPs, both seem to have neglected necessary
investments to counter congestion, making consumers and congestion their
pawns in the game of access.
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In February, 1997, the FCC solicited public comments regarding access
charges on ISPs (http://www.fcc.gov/isp.html). Within a few weeks, the FCC
received over 100,000 messages from the public (some of which came from
spamming sites); again, this demonstrates the power of the Internet. Due to the
huge response, the commission has extended the filing deadline, and will not
make its ruling until later. However, the FCC has maintained its position
against charges on ISPs, prompting its officials to voice the opinion that
telephone companies, which wanted access charges, should be the target of
mass e-mailing—not the FCC.
With state and local governments and competitors eyeing the Internet as a
potential revenue source and the proposed Wyden-Cox bill (see the sidebar,
"U.S. Congress and Internet Taxes" later in the chapter) trying to preempt all
Internet taxes (Taylor, 1997), this nascent industry will face further struggles
and the result will have a significant impact on the Internet's future. Unlike
airwave spectra, which are finite, cable and fiber-optic conduits and
communications equipment can be upgraded by increasing investments.
Whether increased revenues from access charges will encourage telephone
companies to invest to relieve congestion or how much fixed infrastructure
costs ISPs should share with LECs is not entirely certain. While investment
decisions and engineering solutions are being considered, usage-based prices
will efficiently allocate limited resources. The key issue is to align Internet
access prices with telephone charges in a model that recognizes the
convergence in various types of communications infra-structure.
Taxes on Transactions
A separate taxing issue for electronic commerce relates not to the

communications infrastructure but to goods and services. In the case of
physical goods sold over the Internet, existing sales tax laws will apply with
little difficulty. However, intangible goods (digital products) will necessitate
new definitions. For example, while shrink-wrapped computer software is
considered tangible property subject to sales tax, software downloaded over
the Internet may not be subject to the same tax. Even when digital products are
defined as tangible
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properties, the nature of the Internet network may require tax-code revisions or
a new approach toward taxing transactions.
According to existing regulations, businesses must collect and pay sales taxes
if they maintain a substantial presence in the taxing jurisdiction of a state. The
U.S. Supreme Court set a guideline in a 1992 decision (Quill v. North Dakota,
504 U.S. 298) that mail-order firms are not required to collect sales taxes from
customers in states where they have no physical presence—known as taxable
nexus. Therefore, if a mail-order firm in New York sells a product to a
customer in Texas, the firm is not required to collect and pay sales taxes to the
state of Texas, unless substantial taxable nexus applies. What constitutes
substantial nexus differs from state to state, and depends on court
interpretation. For example, a nexus is established if an out-of-state business
maintains an office or a representative, either permanently or temporarily.
Here too, the definition of a representative has to be clearly determined. If a
person lives in Oklahoma but commutes to his office in Texas, does he have an
in-state presence in Texas? If a California firm has a web site in an electronic
mall served by an operator in Texas, does the firm have sufficient presence in
Texas to be subject to Texas sales tax? Identifying proper taxing jurisdiction is
further complicated because a business may have no physical presence at all,
but its virtual presence on the Internet may end up being interpreted as a
presence in all locations. In this case, a web business will be required to collect
state and local taxes (including sales, use, excise, transportation,
telecommunications, and other taxes), all of which have rates differing from
locality to locality.
To avoid double taxation, a simple tax structure would be based on either the
seller (originator of sale) or the buyer (destination of sale). The U.S.
Department of Treasury (1996), while discussing income taxes for global
electronic commerce, recognized residence-based (originator of sale) taxation
as the preferred method because the seller's residence is easier to identify and
corresponds better to the economic activity. Because the originator's residence
simplifies the number of tax rates to be applied, this method would be simpler
than calculating different tax rates for customers, who may belong to different

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taxing jurisdictions. Complicated taxing schemes give sellers an incentive to
circumvent them altogether by using offshore locations for business, which
only requires establishing a computer server and managing remotely.
The Interactive Services Association (1996), whose members include America
Online, AT&T, CompuServe, IBM, and Microsoft Corporation, prefers
destination-based taxes. Under this scenario, as in the traditional mail-order
business, out-of-state sales will not be subject to state sales tax. To simplify
tax rates for multi-state operators, ISA also advocates setting a single tax rate
for each state and basing taxes on the state to which sales are billed—thereby
avoiding thousands of different tax rates levied by local governments. Such a
system might be implemented without much difficulty if Internet commerce is
deemed subject to interstate commerce regulations of the federal government,
which is contemplating sweeping legislation addressing these issues. (See the
following sidebar.)
U.S. Congress and Internet Taxes
Politicians and legislators know what's hot and what's not. A
search at the Library of Congress using the keyword "Internet"
produced 17 bills proposed in the 105th Congress. The bills cover
a wide range of topics, including encryption technologies, the use
of consumer information, and taxes. (See Bill Summary and
Status site at http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d105query.html.) The
following three bills regarding Internet taxation have been
submitted to Congress. H.R. 1054 and S. 442 aim to preempt
local taxes on Internet transactions, and H.R. 995 addresses the
issue of access tax.
(1) H.R.1054
● Sponsor: Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA)
● Introduced 03/13/97
This bill's major objectives include the following:
● to amend the Communications Act of 1934
● to establish a national policy against state and local

interference with interstate commerce on the Internet or
interactive computer services
● to exercise congressional jurisdiction over interstate
commerce on the Internet
Page 495
● to establish a moratorium on taxes and other fees that
would interfere with the free flow of commerce via the
Internet
(2) S. 442
● Sponsor: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
S. 442's goals are similar to those of H.R. 1054; hence we call the
Internet tax bill the Wyden-Cox bill. It proposes the following:
● to establish a national policy against state and local
government interference with interstate commerce on the
Internet or interactive computer services
● to exercise congressional jurisdiction over interstate
commerce
● to establish a moratorium on taxes and fees that would
interfere with the free flow of commerce via the Internet
(3) H.R. 995

● Sponsor: Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL)
H.R. 995 proposes the following:

● to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986
● to clarify that fees for Internet and other online services are
not subject to tax
The bottom line in all these proposals is that sales taxes will have to be
simplified among thousands of local taxing jurisdictions. How this is
accomplished will depend on the simplifying of existing tax structure. The
ISA's approach toward Internet transaction taxes is ambitious in its need to
reformulate a uniform sales tax regime. It is not clear whether such uniformity
is required for transactions taxes to be levied on digital products. Also, because
it advocates a buyer-based taxation, this will require consumers' revealing, at
the very least, their addresses, whereas a seller-based system can support
anonymous transactions. In the absence of federal preemption, the difficulty in
rewriting local tax codes will favor adoption of a seller-based tax system.
Page 496
Sales versus Transfer of Copyrights
Even more basic than the issue of how to apply sales tax is the question of
whether many transactions in electronic commerce can be considered sales of
tangible personal properties at all. As discussed previously, a digital product
has almost zero reproduction cost after the first unit is produced. However, the
variable cost of making a copy and selling it to a customer will not be zero
because the cost of such a sale includes a copyright payment, often to many
authors. Therefore, such transactions may not be considered sales that are
transfers of physical goods, but rather transfers of copyright or the right to use
a copyrighted material. In this case, royalty payments would apply as opposed
to sales taxes.
In general, royalty—that is copyright—income is treated differently from
business income. As a result, types and uses of digital products have to be
considered when assessing state and local taxes, and when income taxes are
levied (U.S. Department of Treasury, 1996). Income generated by a typical
transaction involving software products can fall under any of the following
three categories:
● Royalty income from the transfer of copyright
● Rental income from licensing the use of tangible property
● Sales income from the transfer of software products
Licensing software is generally considered an agreement to transfer

copyrights, thus falling into the royalty income category. However, perpetual
licensing is similar to an over-the-counter sale of a tangible product, and may
be treated as a sale. If the contract is less than perpetual, the transaction may
be considered equivalent to a rental or lease agreement. Finally, the sale of a
digital book may be considered the sale of a physical product, similar to a
printed book, or a transfer of copyrights, in which case the seller's income is
treated as royalty income. Revisions in revenue codes will be necessary to
avoid different treatment of these incomes, a situation that might result in
double taxation or loss of tax credits applied to certain types of income.
Furthermore, if states use different definitions for income generated on the
Internet, it will
Page 497
complicate the decision to establish taxable nexus as businesses try to lower
their tax liabilities.
Different treatments of the same income also cause problems when foreign
taxing jurisdictions are involved. For example, income tax treaties between the
U.S. and its partners treat business profits from sales and royalty payments
differently in terms of withholding and adjusting foreign tax credits (Erickson,
1996). If the country where sales are made considers income subject to
withholding, yet the country where the firm is located does not consider the
income subject to withholding, the firm may face double taxation. Before such
specific issues can be addressed, countries must first define how to treat sales
of digital products and agree on a uniform application.
11.7. Anonymity and Legal Environment for

Commerce
The future of electronic commerce depends on establishing adequate
frameworks for commerce for the Internet. In addition to a workable tax
regime, a consistent and effective legal framework will give content owners an
incentive to market their products online while providing consumers and other
market agents with a reference on what activities are acceptable or criminally
liable. A legal framework is needed not only for copyrights but also for
transactions that are the basis of commerce. For example, can contracts be
signed electronically and sent over the Internet? Do these documents have
legal enforceability? Can a third party act as a witness for an online signing of
a contract or for completing a transaction? While governments are preoccupied
with the possibility of money laundering, security breaches by hackers, and tax
evasion, the ordinary aspects of commerce are neglected—even though these
aspects constitute legal and commercial frameworks without which normal
transactions cannot occur.
The biggest vacuum in the legal framework for electronic commerce is the
lack of verifiable means for identities and transactions—aptly identified as the

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"weak correspondence between computer domain name and reality" by U.S. Department of Treasury officials. Often
the anonymity of the Internet makes it more attractive and increases the level of communication, albeit between
unknown parties. Flame wars are quite common in Usenet newsgroups. Dozens of messages are exchanged after
users see a message that is offensive; if that message were printed in a newspaper, the response rate would be far
less. Flames are even more common in newsgroups in which a lot of participants use anonymous identities. Even
mass e-mail advertisers use anonymous sites, perhaps to avoid receiving angry protest e-mail or spamming sites,
which generate and send multiple messages, even though common sense indicates that consumers will willfully
disregard advertisements from unreachable sites. Nevertheless, you can send and receive communications more
easily on the Internet than traditional media. Such a heightened level of activity should also help the future of
electronic commerce. But the anonymity, suitable for political free speech, is often a hindrance for commerce.
The issue of anonymous transactions has been overblown and intermingled with privacy and free-speech issues.
Anonymous transactions are possible, and sometimes needed, in physical markets. But developers of electronic
payment systems and government officials are preoccupied with anonymity in electronic transactions for fear of
behavior that can be easily corrected or dealt with by existing laws and a slew of technologies, such as money
laundering, double spending, and credit card fraud. The possibility of large-scale online fraud is as rare, or as
prevalent, as in physical markets. More mundane sorts of crimes are committed on the Internet where users,
endowed with virtual identities, commit unacceptable behaviors, from flames to outright crimes.
Lack of identity leads to numerous crimes that may not be possible in physical markets. Although Jayne Hitchcock's
experience (see the sidebar, "Anonymity and Internet Harassment") is a rare example of the abuse of anonymity on
the Internet, many possible scenarios of identity crimes exist (Schneier, 1994). For example, in an old episode of the
television sitcom Cheers, Sam plays a chess game with Robin, to whom Sam represents himself as a chess master. In
reality, Robin is playing against a computer because every
Page 499
move Robin makes is related to Sam's friend, Norm, who is hiding in an adjacent room and entering the moves on
the computer; the computer's move is then relayed secretly to Sam via earphone.
A similar but far more sophisticated fraud could be achieved on the Internet. For instance, suppose Sam claims that
he is a grand master, and challenges both Kasparov and Karpov, but neither knows about the other challenge. Sam
plays white against Kasparov and black against Karpov. Sam repeats every move Kasparov makes to Karpov, and
vice versa. In this game, Kasparov is playing against Karpov, both of whom are impressed by Sam's chess-playing
ability. This is all an innocent practical joke until economic transactions become involved.
Anonymity and Internet Harassment
As Internet usage increases, so does the Internet crime rate. Kids are sending death threats to the White
House via e-mail from school computers; a dismissed employee of a large corporation forges e-mail
messages to support her lawsuit against dismissal; and Internet deadbeats fail to pay required
registration fees for their domain names. Finally, the anonymity of the Internet has also become the
greatest tool for harassment.
The Woodside Literary Agency (WLA) posted advertisements in 1996, some 8,100 of them, in various
UseNet newsgroups soliciting manuscripts from writers. The ad stated that the WLA would accept
almost all submitted manuscripts, but asked a reading fee of $75 to $250. Although such a practice is
unusual, the scam was aimed at writers who would appreciate any possibility to be represented by an
agent and be published. A scam of this scale is not news. But when some writers began posting
warnings against the WLA, the affair became a classic example of the dangers of Internet-scale crimes
and retaliation.
Jayne Hitchcock sent her writing samples to the agency but became suspicious when the agency
requested up-front fees. After she posted warnings about the antics of the agency, the WLA began
posting numerous messages using her name:
"with her home address and phone number attached (the message read):
Female International Author, no limits to imagination and fantasies, prefers group macho/sadistic
interaction, including lovebites and indiscriminate scratches. Stop by my house. Will take your calls
day or night. . . ." (Mingo, 1997).
continues
Page 500
continued
The resulting phone calls to Hitchcock's home were just the beginning. The WLA spammed her e-mail
accounts with harassing letters; inundated various newsgroups with inflammatory messages using her
name; sent her bosses insults and resignation letters with her forged name via e-mail; and sent similar
attacks to her husband's and agent's e-mail accounts.
The WLA changed its e-mail addresses and service providers when complaints were lodged with its
Internet service providers, and continued posting its advertisements using different names for
originators. After almost a year of continued effort by a group of people, the identity of the WLA is still
a mystery. The range of fraud and other criminal activities undertaken by the WLA runs the gamut of
most problematic uses of Internet—fraud, e-mail spamming, misrepresentation, forged signatures, and
forged messages—all perpetrated through the ease and speed of the Internet. On the other hand, the
WLA's virtual identities are difficult to connect to real names and addresses. Even when a connection is
established, law enforcement agencies are often clueless as to how to prosecute them.
Similarly, credit card frauds can occur even when merchants ask for proof that only the real owner can provide.
Suppose Alice uses her credit card to buy an online book through a bogus bookstore. Alice orders a book online
unaware of the bookstore's criminal intentions. When Alice presents her credit card online, the bogus bookstore
operator simultaneously places an order to an online jewelry shop using Alice's identity. When the jewelry shop asks
for proof to verify the credit information, the bookstore operator asks Alice the same question, and provides the
answer to the jewelry shop. In this scheme, Alice is proving her identity to the jewelry shop, but the bookstore
operator gets the jewelry at Alice's expense.
Such mundane crimes of identity can be undertaken quite easily on the Internet. Instead of building an elaborate
office for scams, criminals and scam artists need only a web page, computer technologies, and virtual identities.
While governments are preoccupied with primarily hypothetical crimes, they are neglecting adequate measures to
prevent worldly crimes. A critical crime deterrent is the possibility of being identified. If the electronic marketplace

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were to mirror physical markets, a means to establish an identity, such as
driver's licenses or Social Security numbers, would be needed. Verification
services based on digital signatures are being offered, for example, by
VeriSign (http://www.verisign.com), but there is little effort to make such
services a common practice on the Internet. The fact that a commercial
enterprise takes up such an important function is a clear indication of an
inadequacy in governments' priorities.
11.8. Global Framework for Electronic Commerce

The previous sections have emphasized the need for a new, cohesive
framework within which electronic commerce can function. Complicated as
that may be, a further staggering realization is that not many of the issues
touched upon are local in the digital world. The internationalization of the
Internet goes far beyond any expansion witnessed in the last century. For most
of the 20th century, corporations have operated as multinational entities
knowing no national boundaries. Literally, you can see free trade zones
springing up in North America, Europe, and around the Pacific Rim. While
these large economic blocks of countries represent the most recent
achievement in fostering the free movement of goods, the Internet was created
from its inception without borders. For goods and services that can be ordered
and delivered over the network, the Internet is truly a global marketplace.
As political borders cease to block to trade, global electronic commerce has
implications that reach far beyond mere economic gains from trading. For
example, can nations control the movement of digital goods based on content
or isolate themselves from the rest of the Internet? Can governments exercise
their regulatory powers on the Internet? And how would the effort to set up a
uniform legal and commercial environment for the global electronic commerce
affect physical markets?
Page 502
Convergence in Spatial Markets
It is easy enough to say that electronic commerce is global. The difficulty lies
in identifying the effects of globalization on the economy—changes in income
levels, jobs, domestic prices, and so on. An interesting exercise in international
trade and finance economics is to observe how two previously closed
economies are affected by subsequent interactions in human resources,
materials, and capital. Even though the soundness of trade was proved via the
theory of comparative advantages, in which trade makes sense even when one
country has absolute advantages in all sectors, the advocates and opponents of
free trade continue to debate other issues. Specifically, does international trade
have an impact on domestic economies? And how would borderless electronic
commerce change that?
By definition, a closed economy would not be affected by the international
movements of goods and capital. The United States, for example, was
considered relatively closed until the 1970s as its trade accounted for less than
10 percent of its Gross National Product (GNP). With the share increasing to
more than 15 percent, opinions vary as to the impact of trade on the U.S.
economy.
On one side, the flux of cheap imports into the U.S. is viewed as equivalent to
a huge supply of cheap labor, which depresses low-skilled workers' income
and increases income inequality. Exporting jobs overseas further creates an
oversupply of unskilled labor and affects the laborers' income adversely. On
the other side, competition from foreign labor is greatly discounted as a factor
in the worsening of income inequality. Rather, the blame is put on domestic
policies, especially the introduction of high technology, which raises the
income level of skilled workers while nontechnical workers do not gain. The
argument is that the flight of corporations abroad for cheap labor will not have
a long-term effect because wages in those countries will eventually be driven
up. Low productivity due to the low skill level of domestic workers is cited as
the primary reason the income gap is worsening. For both sides, creating more
jobs domestically will help to narrow the income gap. However, opponents to
free trade argue that expanding job opportunities for low-skilled
Page 503
workers and perhaps encouraging more domestic investments by multinational
corporations will raise wages for low-skilled workers. Advocates of free trade,
on the other hand, argue that such policies will have no effect. Rather, the skill
level and the productivity of low-wage earners have to be raised, perhaps
through more job training and education, but not by restricting job exports by
corporations.
The growth of global information infrastructure and its commercial use cuts
through both of these arguments. Through electronic commerce, high-wage
jobs—not just low-wage jobs—are being exported, that is high-value products
are being imported. For example, software engineers in India work on projects
via satellite networks linking directly with U.S. companies. High-skilled
researchers and scientists in Eastern Europe can be linked via Internet for
research purposes. This will depress wages for high-skilled laborers and
should narrow income inequality. At the same time, education and training
will become cheaper through electronic education services on the Internet, and
technological skill and productivity in the electronic marketplace will level off
among workers because the difference between high-tech and low-tech
laborers is smaller than in physical markets. For these reasons, the income gap
is expected to narrow as electronic commerce grows.
The global nature of electronic commerce will also change how corporations
operate globally, making these corporations more mobile. Shifting
manufacturing abroad is justified when wages are sufficiently different to
account for the cost of relocation. With electronic commerce, that cost will be
smaller, enabling corporations to exploit even small differences in wages. In
essence, this will result in more open economies worldwide and a possible
convergence in income levels.
Artificial Borders
Some governments are not discouraged by the prospect of a globalized

network and believe that movements on the Internet can, as examples show, be
controlled. Through content and access control, minors are protected from
obscene and indecent materials (the Communications Decency Act of 1996 in
Page 504
the U.S.); consumers in some countries are protected from misinformation and
other harmful effects of uninhibited exchange of information (Ang and
Nadarajan, 1996); and a nation (China) can even prevent "spiritual pollution"
by denying access to Internet sites that contain politically sensitive materials.
In other cases, some European governments choose to be isolated by insisting
on local languages as the communications standard instead of English, which
has become the de facto language of the Internet. In this case, languages, not
communications protocols, become the barrier to interoperability.
Imposing control on access and content on the Internet has been an important
issue in terms of free speech. (See the EFF Censorship and Free Expression
Archive at http://www.eff.org/pub/Censorship/and Government Censorship:
the Australian Case at http://www.thehub.com.au/~rene/liberty/debate.html.)
But what is the economic side of the debate regarding the free movement of
ideas? Simply, substitute the word "ideas" with "goods." Thus, any regulation
restricting the free flow of ideas will also restrict the free flow of goods. By
setting up artificial control points on the Internet, governments can turn traders
into smugglers.
This said, the case of cryptography software illustrates the futility of
controlling movements on the Internet. Cryptography is the main technology
for military intelligence and spying. As such, encryption technologies and
software are designated as defense articles and services—listed on the U.S.
Munitions List or the Commerce Control List—for which exporters need
special licenses from the U.S. State Department or the Department of
Commerce (from the latter for commercial software targeted for mass market).
But when someone uploads such a cryptography program on a U.S. web site,
he may be operating as an exporter without licenses because there is no way to
identify and restrict access by foreigners. The alternative is not to put the
programs on the Internet, or to set up controllable artificial borders. Neither
option may be feasible, and both take away the benefits of an open network.
The European Union adopted in July, 1995 a Directive on Protection of
Personal Data, which aims to provide a uniform regulatory setting for
gathering and moving personal data such as names, addresses, and credit
worthiness

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among its member states (http://www.privacy.org/pi/intl_orgs/ec/eudp.html).
Although a uniform legal environment is desirable, the threat to control
economic activities underlies the professed goal of consumer protection. When
data is transferred outside the Union,
"...the Directive includes provisions to prevent the EU rules from
being circumvented. The basic rule is that the non-EU country
receiving the data should ensure an adequate level of protection...
The advantage for non-EU countries that can provide adequate
protection is that the free flow of data from all 15 EU states will
henceforth be assured, whereas up to now each state has decided
on such questions separately" (European Commission press
release,
http://www.privacy.org/pi/intl_orgs/ec/dp_EC_press_release.txt.)
The down side to this is that when the level of protection is deemed
inadequate, the European Union will have the authority to block exports of
personal data. A resulting scenario may be the inability of U.S. corporations to
access their own sales data compiled in Europe (Baker, 1995).
These and many other issues involving access and content control can be
resolved through technology without resorting to making more rules and
regulations. For example, many filtering programs, such as Net Nanny
(http://www.netnanny.com/netnanny), allow total control over Internet
browsing as well as application-level activities based on words, phrases, sites,
and content. These programs enable parents stricter and more effective control
over their children's access than legislation ever could.
Uniform Commercial Environment
The European Union's directive on personal data illustrates the need to have a
global (not regional) perspective in securing a workable commercial
environment for electronic commerce. A uniform commercial environment for
the global information infrastructure (GII) has more to do with setting ground
rules than erecting or removing artificial barriers.
Page 506
However, a uniform commercial environment for the GII must represent
international standardization and national interests to promote economic
well-being. The question is whether a uniform law or regulation can avoid
having differential impacts on individual countries. For example, using a
closed-economy model of trade, countries leverage tariffs and income-tax
policies to manipulate economic performance. However, a uniform
import/export tax—such as no tax, making all Internet transactions
duty-free—implies an open international economy that may result in the loss
of policy control over domestic economy. Domestic industries are often
protected by high tariffs, and a country's balance-of-payment position depends
on selectively controlling exports and imports. Many countries may not accept
simple uniformity if it means relinquishing this tool.
According to the U.S. and the European Union, the principal approach to
achieving a healthy GII is to rely on the market (IITF 1996; European Council,
1994). However, a uniform commercial environment can only be achieved
through widespread international negotiation and cooperation, of which there
has been scant evidence. Several exceptions exist in the areas of copyright, key
encryption, and electronic contract standards. But, even in these areas, the
uniformity underlying these efforts is procedural rather than specific. That is,
the goal is to lay a framework within which governments can verify,
recognize, enforce, and promote international transactions.
In addition to the World Intellectual Property Organization's
(http://www.wipo.org) worldwide conference on copyright (see Chapter 5), the
Working Group on Electronic Commerce of the United Nations Commission
on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)
(http://www.un.or.at/uncitral/mainindx.htm) published its Model Law on
Electronic Commerce (excerpt available at
http://www.un.or.at/uncitral/texts/electcom/english/ml-ec.htm), which
establishes a uniform framework to establish the legal validity of electronic
documents in commerce. The Model Law, adopted in 1996, sets standards for
electronic equivalents to paper-based terms such as writing, signature, and
original. Although UNCITRAL has been working on international standards
for physical goods trading for more than three decades, such
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international bodies will need to take on an increasingly important role, and
also will need to be taken more seriously, in global electronic commerce.
Another prime area of international policy interest is cryptography. As
mentioned earlier, policies regarding encryption technologies are first and
foremost affected by national security interests. Imagine, then, the Internet
filled with private conversations, encoded with unbreakable encryption.
Besides crimes and conspiracies that might be discussed, the normal process of
information gathering by governments would be severely limited.
One method of managing encryption technology requires all keys to be
archived or escrowed with a trusted third party. The archived keys would be
used to break or recover encrypted messages. Managing such a key escrow
system involves a certification authority that issues the keys, a trusted third
party to archive such keys, and an infrastructure to provide the necessary
confidentiality and accountability when governments want to access these keys
on legitimate grounds. At present, the widespread use of encryption
technologies is discouraged by the lack of technology to integrate encryption
into applications, rather than by any impediments imposed by policy
(Denning, 1997).
A global key escrow system is proposed mainly to balance law enforcement
and national security concerns with the need to facilitate private
communications and transactions on a global scale. Nevertheless, the OECD
(http://www.oecd.org) adopted in March 1997 its Guidelines for Cryptography
Policy without specifically endorsing such an international key escrow system.
No matter what systems are supported in the market, however, continued
international cooperation is imperative to achieve an interoperable encryption
system because digital signatures, public keys, and encrypted digital currency
are essential in providing identity, confidentiality, nonrepudiation, and other
basic commercial requirements in the GII.
The global nature of the Internet is clearly one of its strengths, but a
predictable international legal and commercial environment is lacking. Recent
agreements negotiated by the World Trade Organization (http://www.wto.org)
lay a solid foundation for global electronic commerce (see the sidebar, "WTO
Page 508
Agreements"). The urgency to establish an international framework will grow
as digital products become the commodity of the GII, which today remains
largely a communications medium. While governments have some credible
needs to control free exchanges of ideas—whether they be sociocultural or
political reasons—restricting commercial transactions on the GII will have
severe economic consequences.
WTO Agreements
Two recent agreements sponsored by the World Trade
Organization have set up a global market in telecommunications,
computers, and software—helping to remove tariffs and increase
worldwide competition among high-technology firms.
(1) Basic Telecommunications Agreement
In February 1997, 69 WTO members signed the WTO Agreement

on Basic Telecommunications Services, which will go into effect
on January 1, 1998 as part of the General Agreement on Trade in
Services. The Agreement concerns only basic
telecommunications services, excluding value-added services
such as online data services. Signing parties to the Agreement
commit to
"negotiate on all telecommunications services both public and
private that involve end-to-end transmission of customer supplied
information (for example, simply the relay of voice or data from
sender to receiver. They also agreed that basic
telecommunications services provided over network
infrastructure, as well as those provided through resale (over
private leased circuits), would both fall within the scope of
commitments. As a result, market access commitments will cover
not only cross-border supply of telecommunications but also
services provided through the establishment of foreign firms, or
commercial presence, including the ability to own and operate
independent telecom network infrastructure. Examples of the
services covered by this agreement include voice telephony, data
transmission, telex, telegraph, facsimile, private leased circuit
services (that is, the sale or lease of transmission capacity), fixed
and mobile satellite systems and services, cellular telephony,
mobile data services, paging, and personal communications
systems."
The basic telecommunications industry is a $600-billion-a-year

industry. Table 11.1 shows the sizes and shares of the top 10
markets. In comparison, world trade in agriculture totaled $444
billion, automobiles $456 billion, and textiles $153 billion in
1995.

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Table 11.1World Trade Figures
Revenues in Share of Millions (U.S. Dollars) Percentage of Share
United States 178,758.0 29.70
EC (European Community) 170,166.0 28.27
Japan 93,855.0 15.59
Australia 11,403.0 1.89
Canada 10,689.0 1.78
Switzerland 8,889.0 1.48
Korea 8,728.0 1.45
Brazil 8,622.0 1.43
Mexico 6,509.0 1.08
Argentina 6,009.1 1.00
(2) The Information Technology Agreement
WTO's Information Technology Agreement aims at reducing customs duties on computer and
telecommunications products beginning July 1, 1997, and eliminating them altogether by the year
2000. This agreement will also affect the $600 billion market that includes computers, software,
telecommunication products, and semiconductors.
Categories of products covered by the agreement include:

1. Computers (including complete computer systems and laptops as well as components, such
as CPUs, keyboards, printers, display units (monitors), scanners, hard-disk drives, power
supplies, and so on)
2. Telecom equipment (including telephone sets, videophones, fax machines, switching
apparatus, modems and parts thereof, telephone handsets, answering machines,
radio-broadcasting and television transmission and reception apparatus, and pagers)
3. Semiconductors (including chips, wafers, and so on, of various sizes and capacities)
continues
Page 510
continued
4. Semiconductor manufacturing equipment (including a wide variety of equipment and
testing apparatus used to produce semiconductors, such as vapor deposition apparatus, spin
dryers, etching and stripping apparatus, laser cutters, sawing and dicing machines,
deposition machines, spinners, encapsulation machines, furnaces and heaters, ion
implanters, microscopes, handling and transport apparatus, measuring and checking
instruments, and parts and accessories)
5. Software (contained in diskettes, magnetic tapes, CD-ROMs, and so on)
6. Scientific instruments (including measuring and checking devices, chromatographs,
spectrometers, optical radiation devices, and electrophoresis equipment)
Additionally, other main products of interest covered by the ITA include word processors,
calculators, cash registers, ATM machines, certain static converters, indicator panels, capacitors,
resistors, printed circuits, certain electronic switches, certain connection devices, certain electric
conductors, fiber-optic cables, certain photocopiers, computer network equipment (LAN and
WAN equipment), flat panel displays, plotters, and multimedia upgrade kits. The ITA does not
cover consumer electronic goods.
11.9. Antitrust and Regulation Policies

In the interest of promoting competition and efficiency, governments often intervene in the marketplace.
Antitrust laws and regulatory policies aim to promote market efficiencies, such as low prices and efficient
resource allocation. Antitrust laws ensure efficient results by safeguarding the market from anticompetitive
behaviors such as price-fixing conspiracies, predatory pricing, and competition-reducing mergers. Regulation
focuses on markets in which the nature of a product or industry tends to favor a single firm and competition
usually results in inefficiencies. In such markets, promoting competition would not be efficient, that is, would
not bring about lower prices and more output. Such firms are called natural monopolies, and their regulation
should
Page 511
be distinguished from other governmental regulations of wages, environments, safety, and so on.
Anti-regulation and anti-antitrust sentiment has been high since the 1980s. This sentiment stems from antitrust
litigations that were largely ineffective or dragged on for decades without yielding clear guidelines for market
participants. Also, it has been argued that regulated firms could subvert the regulatory process, for example,
by influencing regulators, whereby firms were protected from competition with no apparent gain in efficiency.
An alternative is to depend on market mechanisms. But the nature of digital products poses a severe problem
in defining anticompetitive behaviors. For example, how do you determine that a digital seller is dumping or
practices predatory prices when all products have essentially the same marginal cost? How do you distinguish
the need for interoperability and standardization from monopolization? And should all digital products be
regulated because they have economies of scale and allow only one firm to operate for efficiency reasons?
Two factors seem to favor a single dominant firm in each digital product market: the economy of scale and
interoperability.
Economies of Scale and Regulation
Economies of scale refer to gains or losses in production cost that occur as output is increased. Typically,
production costs first decrease because fixed costs such as buildings and management expenses are shared.
They then increase as inefficiencies kick in when the output level goes beyond the optimal level. For example,
suppose a firm has ten permanent employees who can each produce ten widgets a day given the layout of the
factory, materials, and so on. The salaries and other costs, such as office rent, must be paid whether the firm
produces anything at all. The per-unit cost of the first widget produced is the sum of all these costs, which
decreases until 100 units are produced a day. For the 101st unit, one employee may have to work overtime, the
firm may have to pay special delivery charges to its material suppliers, or a new machine may need to be
purchased. The average cost of a widget increases rapidly beyond the optimal level of production.
Page 512
A simple case of decreasing average cost occurs when there is a high fixed cost but no (or constant) variable
cost. Because the fixed cost is shared by more and more output, the average cost will decrease forever. It is
commonly asserted that computer software costs nothing or little to duplicate. Development costs account for
the majority of the software's production cost. Consequently, the average cost of a computer program will drop
as more copies are sold. Similarly, most digital products appear to have economies of scale.
When a product has a decreasing average cost or an increasing economy of scale, the market often fails to
achieve an efficient solution. Competition implies duplicated fixed costs, and no firm could recoup its fixed
costs unless the market price equals the average cost. Without such guarantee, no firms will produce the
product. Does this imply that all digital products should be regulated as natural monopolists?
Digital products may not have economies of scale for two reasons. First, computer software, and most digital
products for that matter, may not have decreasing average costs. Although duplicating costs may indeed be
relatively small compared to initial development costs, duplication costs are not the only variable costs for
most products. Many physical products have low variable costs—for example, cereals, sneakers, and so
on—but they do not have decreasing average costs, because variable costs (such as administrative, marketing,
and distribution costs) increase at a faster rate as the number of sales increase (Liebowith and Margolis, 1995).
For this reason, many digital products will have U-shaped average costs (see Chapter 8 for more detail about
costs). Furthermore, for each copy of software or information sold, other substantial costs may exist, for
instance, copyright payments and copyright enforcement costs, customer support expenses, and management
and accounting costs. As a result, whether digital products exhibit decreasing average costs remains an
empirical question.
Second, economy of scale is not as relevant when products are not homogeneous. The economy of scale
simply indicates that having one producer is more efficient if you consider all varieties as essentially the same.
For

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differentiated products catering to different segments of consumers, multiple
products are desired. These products may be produced by one producer.
However, the costs associated with differentiation and customization may
indicate a lack of scale economies. For application software such as word
processing and spreadsheet programs, differentiation is desirable. Any
artificial means to standardize such programs will be contrary to competition
and consumer satisfaction. Again, economy of scale will not be the primary
concern.
Interoperability, Standardization, and Market Dominance
Some of the network effects often mentioned in computer-related literature

concern interoperability rather than network externality. Interoperability means
that two different products can communicate through some common interface
to enable various functions such as swapping disks and files, or using
third-party auxiliary equipment, macro programs, and extensions. Two
interoperable computers can establish a connection with each other;
interoperable word processors can exchange files; interoperable VCRs can
read and play the same video tape; and most electric appliances can
interoperate with the prevailing electric service and add-on equipment.
Interoperability is achieved through standardization, the extent of which is
determined by what needs to be exchanged. For e-mail messages, different
operating systems (OSs)—Windows, MacOS, IBM's OS2, and Unix, for
instance—may need to adopt standard communications protocols. Other
features of an operating system need not be interoperable.
For example, Microsoft's dominant market position is explained by computer
software tending to favor interoperability and standardization, with network
externality thrown in as well. Microsoft Word files can be freely exchanged
between those who use Windows and Macintosh operating systems, whereas
WordPerfect files lose format when read with Microsoft Word, and vice versa,
even when both programs are run on the same Windows OS. So,
Page 514
the interoperability has nothing to do with the compatibility of operating
systems but rather is a matter of word-processing programs having
interoperable features. To further illustrate the point, consider electric toasters.
Toasters need at least two standardized features: they have to interface with the
electric power source and they must be able to accept bread slices. Similarly,
word-processing programs need two interface capabilities: they have to work
with an operating system and must be able to accept different files. If word
processors are interoperable, users will have minimal hassles in exchanging
files created in one program into another. Today, such interoperability does not
exist. In a way, the lack of interoperability among word-processing programs
is akin to the inability to plug one hair dryer into another country's outlet—a
problem anyone traveling from the U.S. to Europe has experienced. If the
ability to exchange files is paramount in this age of information, some sort of
interoperability among word-processing programs through standardization is
necessary.
Standardization may be achieved either through standard-setting efforts or
through competition. Standards may be established by defining features that
need to be interoperable for everyone's benefit—for example, for
interchanging files. However, a standard-setting session among competitors
may be a disguised conference for collusion. Especially, the volume of
exchanged messages on the Internet may prove to be a problem in detecting
collusive behaviors among competing firms (Baker, J.B., 1996). On the other
hand, vigorous enforcement to prevent industry collusion may discourage
standard-setting activities (Lemley, 1996). Alternatively, through competition,
one product becomes a de facto standard by dominating the market and forcing
all others to comply with the product's standards. But, its producer is not
obligated to reveal its specifications, unlike the case of industry-wide standard
setting. Should governments require that all de facto standard products reveal
their product specifications to competitors and producers of related products?
This will necessarily involve a complex process of guaranteeing profits for the
standard-setter, which is far from an improvement over government
regulations.
Page 515
Standardization does not mean that all competing products have to be
abandoned. It only means that some interoperable features need to be based on
the standards. How is this different from one product becoming a dominant
product? Through standardization, consumers will have choices (for example,
in programs) with interoperability, whereas left to markets they may have to
face monopoly prices.
Videocassette competition between Betamax and VHS illustrates the market's
ability to standardize products. Betamax versus VHS is similar to having two
different sizes of floppy disks. When VHS became the industry standard,
however, the result was not one firm producing VCRs. Under the interoperable
standard, the healthy competitive market supports numerous competitors and
lower prices for VCRs. The case of word-processing programs or operating
systems is fundamentally different from Betamax and VHS standards because
the competition in programs and OSs is not about standards. Instead, it often
involves a variety of products that are vertically integrated—for example,
microprocessors, computer hardware, OSs, and application programs and
contents. You can witness vertically integrated monopolists in a wide range of
product markets, although interoperability and standardization in no way imply
that the computer industry will tend to be concentrated. Nevertheless,
indiscriminate use of interoperability and standardization to excuse the vertical
monopolization process has clouded understanding of the true nature of this
market. Although market-driven solutions often encourage competition and
efficiency without the follies of artificial government intervention, economists
and market analysts need to provide clearer definitions and analyses of the
effects of interoperability, standardization, and dominance on this multimedia
computer industry.
Page 516
Network Externality and Monopolization
In addition to scale economies and interoperability, network externalities are

often cited to explain the emerging monopolistic market dominance of a few
firms in computer and high-tech industries. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3,
some products, and especially communications networks, are more valuable if
more people use the same product or network. Such an advantage results in
market dominance after a product's market share surpasses a certain threshold.
This section examines the effects of network externalities on market structure
such as monopolization. A firm's monopoly power obtained by this
process—that is, as a result of being a popular or superior product, must be
distinguished from one amassed through anticompetitive behaviors. But, as in
the case of interoperability, network externalities have become a catch-22 for
government regulators.
Monopoly and Welfare Loss: The Problem
First, consider why monopolization is seen as harmful. A general result in the

economic theory of firms states that the greatest economic sin of a monopolist
is that it restricts output, and by doing so, raises the price above the marginal
cost of production. Society's resources could be better used if the price equaled
marginal cost, which usually means that more output is desired in the case of a
monopoly.
Figure 11.2 shows a monopolist's pricing and output decision based on market
demand and cost of production. To maximize its profit, a firm operates at the
output level when its marginal cost is equal to its marginal revenue (Qm). The
next unit will generate less revenue than its production cost, shrinking its total
profit. By producing less, the firm misses the opportunity to increase its total
profit. At the optimal output level (Qm), the market price is determined by
demand (Pm), which is greater than the marginal cost (MC). The firm's
per-unit profit is the difference between the price and the cost (Pm _ MC), and
the total profit is the shaded area in figure 11.2.

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Figure 11.2 Monopolist's output decision.

At the Qm level of output, consumers' willingness to pay (Pm) is still greater
than the cost of producing the product (MC). Thus society will be better off if
more resources are allocated into this industry to increase the level of output
until marginal cost and marginal benefit are equal. At Qc, for example,
consumers are willing to pay Pc, which is equal to the marginal cost, but the
firm will only break even because the price equals the cost. Comparing the
zero-profit levels of output and price (Qc, Pc) with those of monopoly (Qm,
Pm), the monopolist firm clearly produces too little and sells the product at a
price higher than does a competitive firm.
For many physical products, this scenario's implications are straightforward.
However, computer software and many digital products with network
externalities do not allow ready applications of this monopoly model. For
example, if Microsoft is a monopolist in the market for OS software, then
Microsoft must be artificially restricting its output to raise price. A more
competitive Microsoft would have produced far more units of Windows and
other assorted operating systems. But, is Microsoft not selling enough
Page 518
products? That doesn't seem right. Rather, the problem, as far as regulators and
its competitors are concerned, is that Microsoft dominates the OS software
market—that is, the company sells too many.
This paradoxical result can be explained in several ways. Three explanations
follow regarding the market position of Microsoft and its market impacts.
These summaries also apply in general to most computer and high-tech
industries.
● No Market Power: Output restriction occurs after the firm achieves
market power. The firm in figure 11.2 is assumed to have monopoly
market power. In other words, it can restrict output and raise price only
because it does not face competition. Microsoft, on the other hand, still
faces competition despite its dominance (producing roughly 80 percent
of operating systems for desktop computers). Consequently, Microsoft's
dominance does not result in lower output and higher price, as would be
expected with a monopoly.
● Scale Economies: Figure 11.2 assumes that the firm has an increasing
marginal cost. Instead, computer software generally has a decreasing
marginal and average cost because of its high fixed cost and extremely
low duplicating (variable) cost. In other words, the average cost of
production decreases as more products are sold. An efficient level of
product in such a case enables one firm to produce all necessary output
to achieve the maximum economies of scale. Competing firms
unnecessarily duplicate fixed costs and result in waste. Therefore,
Microsoft's dominance in OS software is an efficient result owed to the
characteristics of the software industry.
● Network Externalities: There are network externalities by which
consumers benefit from having one standard product. With network
externalities, the value of a product rises as more people obtain the same
product. Therefore, the more the merrier. Microsoft's dominance simply
is a manifestation of network externalities that relentlessly drive the
computer software industry to standardization and dominance of a few
successful firms.
Page 519
The first argument of no market power proposes that Microsoft's market
dominance does not have the problems associated with the standard monopoly.
Despite its market share, Microsoft faces fierce competition from Apple's
MacOSs, IBM's OS, and Unix-based OSs. Monopoly rents (higher profits) will
be gained if no competition exists. But there is no evidence that Microsoft is in
a position to raise prices because of present and future competition.
However, Microsoft's market power should be determined in the PC clone
market rather than in OS software. OS software is useless without a platform
on which to run. For that matter, a computer is also useless if it does not have
an OS. Therefore, Microsoft is a player in the PC clone market. It may seem
that fiercer competition exists in the PC market, in which no one firm
commands more than 25 percent of the market. Because of competition, a PC's
price is assumed efficient. This might be true in terms of hardware prices.
However, PC buyers must also buy an OS, such as Windows 95, which
commands a monopoly price. If this price were lower, more personal
computers would be purchased. Consequently, monopoly problems exist in the
PC market, in which the level of output may be well below the socially
efficient level. Monopolistic components of a PC include the OS software as
well as microprocessors dominated by Intel. Despite cost savings in many PC
components, the PC's price is still prohibitively high for the majority of the
population. The reason? Monopoly market power of Microsoft and Intel.
The second argument regarding economies of scale was discussed earlier. In
short, the average cost of computer software may not be declining due to
rapidly increasing nonproduction costs. Contrary to the assumption that
software prices may be zero because of the scale economy, giving away these
programs may very well be an act of dumping and predatory pricing.
Finally, network externalities, or economies of the network, seem to promote
monopolistic computer software firms, which behave like telephone services.
As more people use Windows on their computer, for example, its popularity
feeds on itself, making Microsoft an unwilling monopolist. It is argued that
Microsoft's market dominance is due to network economies of its
Page 520
products, and it is often more efficient to have only one firm producing such a
product than to have many firms competing with similar products.
Analyzing this argument requires considerable effort because the term network
externality is used indiscriminately in today's popular press and even in
academic journals. The term is often used in connection with interoperability,
standardization, and economies of scale. All these concepts relate to some type
of market incentive that drives the market toward a single dominant product as
consumers benefit from its dominance—leaving an impression that market
positions of Microsoft and other computer-related giants are somehow due to
the nature of products, not their anticompetitive behaviors. Network
externalities seem to suffer the most abuse. Thus the following section focuses
on this problem.
Externalities and Their Effects
To define network externality, we must begin with the term externality. An

externality is a feature of a product that has no market price. Its price cannot be
determined because there is no clear way to define ownership of the product,
or sometimes to define the product itself. An example is air pollution from a
factory. Because air is not owned, the price or cost of polluted air cannot be
determined. Therefore, air pollution is an externality. Another example is
shade associated with a large tree. The tree's owner cannot determine its shade
as a product (because it is created by the sun), nor charge for it in any
marketable way. Note that shade is external to trees, which have prices
determined in the market. In a sense, an externality is a part of the
characteristics of a product, which nevertheless cannot be priced in the market.
Externality is an important economic concept because it distorts the market
result. An efficient market employs resources up to a point when their
marginal costs equal market prices. Suppose that an air-polluting factory
producing a widget has a marginal cost of $50 without considering the
pollution. Suppose 10,000 customers want to buy the widget at $50. However,
if the cost of pollution is included, say $10 per widget, the widget's cost
becomes $60. At that price, fewer than 10,000 customers will buy the widget.

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Therefore, widgets are overproduced—an inefficient resource allocation—if
you do not consider its externality (negative in this case).
Again, suppose that a home-builder considers how many trees to plant.
Suppose that the market value of each home increases by $3,000 if it has trees.
At $100 per tree, the home-builder plants 30 trees. However, neighbors may
benefit from the trees' shade and the neighborhood's increased home values;
say these benefits are worth $500. Therefore, an optimal number of trees is 35
instead of 30 if the home-builder considers the externality of planting trees
(positive in this case). Instead, trees are underproduced because the
home-builder has no means of charging his neighbors the added cost of $500.
Because externalities bring about these inefficiencies, you need to counter
externalities. For some externalities, the solution is to define property rights
more clearly. If the cost of pollution is clearly defined, the widget factory may
be required to pay $10 for each unit produced. If the home-builder can
appropriate the benefit of tree planting, or be compensated for the cost, he will
plant an optimal number of trees. If computer software has positive network
externality (a benefit to its users), the program will be underproduced unless
the producer can appropriate such benefit in terms of revenue. The economic
concern stems from such solutions often being impossible through market
processes.
On the other hand, if a market price already reflects the price of an external
benefit or loss, no externality problem exists. For example, a computer OS
may have a positive externality in that its value increases as more people use
the same product. This can be represented by an upward sloping benefit
schedule for consumers (see fig. 11.3), indicating that the average consumers'
willingness to pay (WTP) increases with more users. Given the firm's marginal
cost schedule, an optimal number of product is Q1, with the price of P1, if the
firm can charge consumers for the benefit from network externality. If not, the
output is reduced to Q2, with a lower price of P2, that corresponds to the
willingness to pay without network externality. At P2, the marginal cost is
below the true consumers' willingness to pay, indicating that the product is
underproduced.
Page 522
Figure 11.3 Network externality and output.
Network Effects versus Network Externalities
After you become clear about network externalities, you must distinguish
simple network effects from network externalities. If market prices fully
reflect the cost and benefit associated with an externality, no economic
concern exists. For example, if market prices efficiently determine the level of
air pollution or the number of trees planted, what we call externalities are no
longer externalities. Still, market size has some sort of effect, and such effects
are often called network effects to indicate that these effects do not result in
market inefficiencies.
If the price of OS software or an application program is raised to extract most
or all of the benefit associated with network externalities, the market needs no
intervention. Similarly, the dominant position of such a product, or its
desirability, should not be explained by network externalities. Instead, what
appears to be the result of network externality may be due to economies of
scale (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1995) or anticompetitive behaviors. When
comparing prices in the computer hardware market, the OS market, and the
applications software market, many perceive that network externalities are also
Page 523
behind the dominance of a player in all these markets. Simply put, prices for a
PC drop as more people use the Windows OS. In addition, Windows has more
application programs because more people use Windows, and so on. The
market is invariably dominated by a vertically integrated firm or a multi-firm
regime, such as the Windows-Intel platform. These arguments indiscriminately
apply network effects to different industries. That is, network externalities
between different products (often termed as indirect network externalities) are
mostly network effects, not externalities (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1995).
These network effects across different products are hardly distinguished from
anti-competitive behaviors that impose artificial connections such as tie-ins, or
exclude downstream competitors from accessing upstream products that one
monopolizes.
Anticompetitive Behaviors
A dominant firm should not use its position in one market to influence other
markets. For example, application programs need to interoperate with OS
software, which may be dominated by one firm. Through anticompetitive
behaviors, the dominating firm may extend its market power into the
application software market. While governments cannot prevent the firm from
entering related markets, this case may fall into the category of illegal tie-ins
prohibited by antitrust laws. Often, such tie-ins are practiced as bundling of
vertically related products. For example, Microsoft as a dominant firm in OSs
tries to dominate the web browser market as well. If Microsoft uses its market
power in OS to advance its interest in the web browser market, the company
certainly appears to be a monopoly. However, enforcement efforts are often
discouraged due to the need for interoperability, standardization, and network
externality, which compound understanding of what constitutes anti-
competitive behaviors in digital product markets. This section, provides an
example of how interrelated digital markets may be analyzed to understand
firms' behaviors in these markets.
Microsoft sells many application software products, including web browsers in
addition to OS programs. By bundling this software with Windows OS,
Page 524
and using various means to make it difficult for consumers to use
non-Microsoft applications, Microsoft tries to extend its monopoly market
power of one market (OS software) into the applications market.
It is often argued that the scale economy in computer software, rather than
monopolization, explains the bundling and the dominance of Microsoft. That
will depend on the extent of the economy of scale in that product market, but is
highly unlikely as was previously argued. Alternatively, some argue that a
need for standardization and interoperability works to favor integrated
software, such as Microsoft's bundles, which are also integrated with the
Windows OS. But as argued earlier, there is no apparent reason why the need
for standardization or interoperability between an OS and an application
program should give one firm substantial advantages over others. In other
words, Microsoft Word and WordPefect have equal opportunities in the
market for word-processing programs, just as different VCR manufacturers
have. If one program enjoys network externalities, its price must be higher
than the other to reflect its true value. If one is more convenient with the
Windows OS, it may indicate a lack of true interoperability and
standardization. A monopolist in the OS market must provide all application
software vendors equal access to its standards and specifications necessary to
run any application on its OS. The monopolist is what is known as the
common carrier.
Common Carriers and Microsoft
In telecommunications industries, the concept of common carrier is

well-known and accepted by market players and regulators. For example,
suppose Alice operates the only licensed magazine stand in Our Fair City.
Suppose also that her stand is the only location all citizens can access. Bob and
Charlie produce magazines that can be distributed only through Alice. Alice,
in this example, acts as a conduit for contents created by the publishers. The
selection of magazines on her stand is entirely up to her. She considers the
number of magazines she can accommodate, and each magazine's popularity
and profit margins. However, she cannot perform certain acts. For example,
Bob may try to influence Alice not to carry Charlie's magazine by offering a
higher

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commission. But Alice must also offer Charlie the same opportunity to pay a
higher price before discontinuing his magazine. Bob may issue many versions
of his magazine to fill up Alice's stand, but Alice must sell Charlie's unless she
can prove that all Bob magazines are more popular than Charlie's—or Bob
pays more money to carry his magazines.
The seemingly unreasonable restrictions on Alice and favors for Charlie stem
from the city's inability to accommodate more magazine stands. When
resources are limited, an equal and reasonable access by all publishers to the
distribution medium becomes important. Besides First Amendment and
free-speech issues, Bob's magazines may not be produced efficiently if the
market process is interfered—for example, some consumers will never know
the value of Charlie's magazine. Those who control limited distribution
conduits are called common carriers. For example, local telephone networks
are common carriers to long-distance companies because they cannot provide
long-distance services without access to the local exchange monopoly.
Because of limited resources and often large investments needed to build and
maintain common carrier services, common carriers are often regulated as
natural monopolists. When regulations are abandoned, however, the market
may produce inefficiencies. For example, suppose Alice decides to publish her
own magazines (or merge with Charlie). If her magazine stand is no longer
regulated as a common carrier, she has an incentive to sell only her magazines.
Other publishers will have no distribution outlets. As long as Alice has the
only magazine stand, therefore, other publishers must be guaranteed
reasonable access to her stand.
Vertical Integration and Retail Wheeling
The point of the preceding example is that a monopolist selling OS software

may be interpreted as a common carrier. Application software vendors are
publishers who need access to the magazine stand—that is, an OS to run their
programs. If Microsoft as a monopolist in OS also enters the application
software market, what sort of behaviors are acceptable? Or what sort of fair
and unfair advantages does Microsoft have over other vendors? The concept of
Page 526
common carriers, which is well researched in telecommunications economics,
presents a framework that can answer these questions better than the jumble of
interoperability and network externalities that seem to pervade today's
analysis.
For example, suppose Alice, or Microsoft, is an upstream monopolist. Bob and
Charlie, and application software vendors, are downstream competitors who
depend on products and services monopolized by the upstream monopolist.
When Microsoft enters the downstream market, it has an incentive to raise its
downstream competitors' costs to expand its own downstream market share.
Microsoft may sell its OS specifications to rivals at a higher price than its
internal price, or restrict full access to the specifications. However, higher
costs in the downstream market may reduce the number of Windows-based
application programs and lower demand for Microsoft's OS. Therefore,
Microsoft also has an incentive to lower, not raise, rivals' costs. Sibley and
Weisman (1997) examine these incentives in the context of telephone services
in which a local exchange monopolist enters long-distance call services whose
providers must pay the monopolist access fees. Sibley and Weisman show that,
as the monopolist begins its new service, its incentive is to lower rivals' costs,
but as its share in the downstream market grows, it has more incentive to raise
rivals' costs.
Sibley and Weisman also examine the effects of requiring the monopolist to
enter the downstream market with a fully separate subsidiary, which is favored
by government regulators. For example, should governments require Microsoft
to spin off its application software business from its OS business? Although it
is difficult to gauge how independent a subsidiary can be from its upstream
owner, the upstream monopolist behaves differently if it does not consider the
total profits from the two markets, as it does if it is a vertically integrated firm.
In general, the separated monopolist has an incentive to lower rivals' costs
because that will increase the overall market demand for its product.
The breakup of AT&T into regional Baby Bells and a long-distance company
in 1983 was an effort to disintegrate or disaggregate a vertically integrated
firm. AT&T's long-distance company subsequently found itself competing
against numerous companies, such as MCI and Sprint. Regional
Page 527
Bell companies, however, were granted a monopoly in the belief that they are
natural monopolies. After only a decade, local exchange markets face
competition from wireless networks, long-distance companies, and cable
operators. This seemingly increasing competition has allowed the abandoning
of regulatory constraints not only in the telecommunications industry but also
in electric utility and natural gas industries.
Deregulation in the electric utility industry, for example, aims to provide more
choices for consumers. How would consumers deal with competing electric
power suppliers? Does this mean that consumers will have separate power
connections or that they will have access to alternative power sources? The
proposed electricity deregulation will result in neither scenario. Rather, the
deregulation proposes a mechanism by which excess power supplies are
routed—or wheeled—through existing power grids to reach final consumers.
This retail wheeling requires an efficient means to connect various players in
the market. For example, the electric utility industry consists of upstream
power producers, power wholesalers who mediate excess power supplies and
sell directly to industrial users, regional power grid operators, and electricity
retailers who deal with consumers. If an excess power supplier is found in a
remote area, a potential customer must be able to negotiate prices and arrange
delivery, which may involve many intervening power producers and power
grid operators. Wheeling costs are added to the final price.
Not surprisingly, electronic commerce on the Internet has become a critical
ingredient in electricity deregulation. To facilitate intermediation in electricity
wholesaling, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC;
http://www.fedworld.gov/ferc/ferc.html) in 1996 required each public utility
engaged in interstate commerce to create an Open Access Same-time
Information System (OASIS), also known as Transmission Service
Information Network, or TSIN (see http://www.tsin.com for OASIS and
TSIN), through which potential wholesalers can shop around instead of relying
on personal contacts. A sample TSIN system is built on the Internet using
secure web technologies. Again, the open, networked Internet environment is
proving its superiority over proprietary bulletin board systems used by gas
companies (Radosevich,

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1997). Although today's TSIN is limited to wholesalers, electronic commerce
will provide a crucial framework for further efforts to include consumer
retailing in electricity as well as in natural gas.
Just as retail wheeling was unimaginable only a few years ago in regulated
utility markets, the infrastructure convergence is opening an era of competition
in numerous monopolistic markets with new types of firms. These include
more specialized firms, a result of disaggregating formerly vertically
integrated firms. On the other hand, regional monopolists are becoming
national competitors through horizontal mergers (for example, SWB and
Pacific Telesis; Nynex and Bell Atlantic) and through integration across
different markets (for example, AT&T's entering regional Bell's markets and
vice versa). In this shuffle, there is a danger of forgetting why society opted for
disintegration and deregulation: to increase competition, lower prices, and
raise economic efficiencies. To avoid a mishap, economic implications of
these changes in market structure must be better understood. For example, if
disintegration and retail wheeling make sense in the utility industry, why is it
different to break up software companies into OS and application software
units? If local exchange networks are common carriers, why would OS
vendors not be treated the same way? Are network externality and
interoperability the same forces that facilitate natural monopoly market
structure in the communications and utility industries? And, should these
forces be discarded as they are in the latter? This section answers some of
these questions; others await more in-depth analyses.
11.10. The Economics of Electronic Commerce and

the Internet
The economics of the Internet as an important use of telecommunications
networks has become a fashionable area of research. The accumulated
knowledge of telecommunications economics is beginning to be applied
vigorously to classical economic problems of resource allocation as well as to
policy issues
Page 529
for Internet communication. Electronic commerce is sometimes subsumed
under this field because researchers erroneously assume that electronic
commerce is just one of the many uses of the Internet infrastructure. This
section clarifies the relationship between the Internet and electronic commerce,
and in doing so, highlights the difference between the economics of the
Internet and the economics of electronic commerce. In brief, the former
emphasizes the nature of communications infrastructure whereas the latter
focuses on issues of digital commodity markets. A further objective is to show
the limitations in defining the economics of the Internet as a part of
communications economics, in which regulatory policies are of paramount
interest.
The Economics of Electronic Commerce
Research in the economics of the Internet is a subfield of communications

economics. Communications economics deals with economic problems
associated with limited resources, such as the telephone network, on which
Internet traffic happens to travel. Although the Internet is based on different
technologies, such as routing and packet switching, it is essentially an
alternative use of the existing telephone network. Accordingly, Internet service
pricing, taxation, and competition among service providers are important
topics of research in determining efficient resource allocation, the profitability
of investments in telecommunications, and proper government policies.
However, the very nature of Internet communications is changing. The next
generation of Internet traffic may well bypass traditional telephone or cable
networks and connect users via satellites that transmit data directly into
personal computers. Such wireless communications are already beginning to
dominate many business sectors, such as paging services, mobile telephones,
and cable television. With low earth-orbiting satellite networks and infrared
sensors in computers, the infrastructure for the future Internet may bypass the
wired telephone infrastructure. After all these wired and wireless networks are
converted into digital networks and become interoperable, today's wire-based
Internet will be only a small portion of the information infrastructure.
Regardless, the nascent interest among economists is focused on the wired
Internet infrastructure.
Page 530
In contrast, the economics of electronic commerce is concerned with a new
market whose delivery and communication infrastructure happens to be the
Internet. The distinction should be clearly made between digital product
markets and digital delivery infrastructure. To use an analogy, the economics
of the Internet focuses on the workings of the interstate highway system, and
the telephone and mail networks, whereas the economics of electronic
commerce focuses on markets whose transactions are facilitated by
communications networks and delivery systems. The primary focus of the
latter is on product choices, market strategies, prices, and other traditional
subjects of economics within the context of digital products and, equally
important, physical products whose production, marketing, and consumption
processes are affected. Although transportation and communications
economics is an important field, the economics of the Internet, as currently
defined and researched, is only one small part of the economics of electronic
commerce.
The confusion stems from the practice of regarding the Internet and electronic
commerce as equivalent. The Internet, due to its openness and versatility, is
the medium of choice for electronic commerce. However, any digital
communications media will soon be capable of supporting virtual transactions
in the electronic marketplace, including telephone wires, cables, microwaves,
and satellites. Occasionally, commerce on the Internet is regarded as
equivalent to electronic commerce. But the distinguishing characteristic of
electronic commerce is in the way the market is organized and transactions are
carried out: by virtual market agents, digital products, and electronic market
processes. The economics of electronic commerce aims to analyze
fundamental changes in market processes and products. Such an innovative
market can exist and function regardless of the infrastructure on which it is
based. The Internet, in essence, is only a transitory infrastructure on which the
electronic marketplace has been launched.
Page 531
The Economics of Information Infrastructure
The development of the information infrastructure, of which the Internet is one

element, poses many technological and economic problems. To make the
infrastructure a reality, technologies in varying and competing industries such
as telephone, cable, private commercial information services, EDI, and various
wireless communications will have to be interoperable. At the same time,
simple equipment, such as cable modems, which enable Internet users to
connect via cable, and digital switches, are taking more time and effort to
develop than expected. Communications protocols and other product
standards, such as video and audio compression, languages for web documents
and applets, and digital currency have to be worked out among increasingly
numerous and diverse participants. The dominance of the TCP/IP protocol as
the communications standard was a happy consequence of its popularity
among Internet users. The Internet's popularity made it the heavyweight in
comparison with private online services, which first attempted to compete with
the Internet and failed. As a result, the Internet has become synonymous with
information infrastructure. But, as business interest intensifies, its future might
not be as smooth as its past.
Numerous economic issues also pose threats to the future of information
infrastructure. Flat-rate pricing for online services raised the specter of
congestion and inefficiency. Local telephone companies and Internet service
providers are fighting a battle over access charges. Governments are
contemplating various forms of taxes and tariffs for Internet services and
transactions.
Economists who are primarily interested in network economics are ana-lyzing
these issues because such issues arise naturally in telecommunications
networks. While the information infrastructure is evolving from its dependence
on wired telecommunications networks to a more diverse mixture of
infrastructure including cable and wireless networks, the economics of Internet
infrastructure remains focused on traditional problems of a wired telephone

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network, in which the economies of scale and regulatory efficiencies are of
primary concern. The telephone industry is not only being deregulated but also
faces competition from nontelephone infrastructure, which can carry all types
of digital traffic. Future commercial potential and profitability determine
investment decisions, and competition will be the driving force in achieving
economic efficiency. The focus of economic analysis should also make a
transition from regulatory economics to one of multiple infrastructure
competition and related problems in resource allocation.
For example, the decision to exempt Internet service providers from paying
access charges, despite their use of facilities owned by telephone companies,
has a profound impact on the level of investment in the telephone network—or
so it is claimed by telephone companies that will not invest if their fixed costs
in cable and exchange equipment cannot be recovered. Such investment
behavior is consistent with that of natural monopolists, and is the reason
regulatory agencies allow a certain rate of return for these monopolists.
However, in a competitive market environment, a telephone company will
charge for its service based on marginal cost, not average cost, and access
charges calculated to recoup fixed costs will be excess profits that cannot be
expected. Whether access charges on ISPs are justified is an empirical
question. The point here is that the information infrastructure needs to be
analyzed not in the context of regulated natural monopolies—for example
focusing on ways to recover fixed or stranded costs through market
competition—but rather in terms of the market where various types of
networks are converging to compete. Congestion-free pricing and competition
may find new uses for stranded investments. The economics of information
infrastructure goes beyond a simple extension of telecommunications
economics. What its focus and emphasis should be is left as a future area of
research.
Page 533
11.11. Summary
This chapter presented some pressing issues in electronic commerce. Many of
the issues discussed require applying a new perspective that commerce on the
Internet represents a new type of market. Instead of treating commerce on the
Internet as an extension of existing commerce or as an alternative distribution
channel, the electronic marketplace should be perceived as a market in which
players, products, and processes all undergo fundamental changes. Product
differentiation, searches, copyrights, consumer privacy, micropayments, and
other issues arise in physical markets as well. But because these factors take on
different dimensions when players and products are virtual and market
processes are networked and aided by computers, they can only be clearly
understood if you put them in the larger context of electronic commerce as a
market.
Page 534
References
Ang, P.H. and B. Nadarajan, 1996. "Censorship and the Internet: A Singapore
Perspective." Communications of the ACM, 39(6) pp.72_78.
Baker, J.B., 1996. "Horizontal Price-Fixing in Cyberspace." Presented at The
1996 Antitrust Conference: Antitrust Issues in Today's Economy. Available at
http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/other/confbd4.htm.
Baker, S., 1995. "The Net Escape Censorship? Ha!" Wired, issue 3.09
(September, 1995). Available online at
http://www.hotwired.com/wired/3.09/departments/baker.if.html.
Bernheim, B.D. and M.D. Whinston, 1997. "Incomplete Contracts and

Strategic Ambiguity." American Economic Review, forthcoming.
Denning, D.E., 1997. "International Encryption Policy." In R. Kalakota and
A.B. Whinston, eds., Readings in Electronic Commerce, Chapter 5, pp.
105_118. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Erickson, Elaine, 1996. "Software Royalty Income from Licensing Software:
Is it Rental or Sales Income?" HIGHTECH, August, 1996. Available at
http://www.wgl-hightech.com/0896/soft-text.html.
European Council, 1994. "Europe and the Global Information Society:
Recommendations to the European Council." A copy is available at
http://www.rewi.hu-berlin.de/datenschutz/report.html.
Information Infrastructure Task Force, 1996. A Framework for Global
Electronic Commerce. Available at
http://www.iitf.nist.gove/eleccomm/glo_comm.htm.
Internet Access Coalition, 1997. The Effect of Internet Use on the Nation's
Telephone Network. Summary available at http://internetaccess.org/study.htm.
Page 535
Interactive Services Association (ISA), 1996. Logging on to Cyberspace Tax
Policy White Paper. Available at
http://www.isa.net/about/releases/taxwhpap.html.
Keller, A.M., 1997. "Smart Catalogs and Virtual Catalogs." In R. Kalakota and
A.B. Whinston, eds., Readings in Electronic Commerce, Chapter 11, pp.
259_271. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Liebowitz, S.J. and S. E. Margolis, 1995. "Are Network Externalities a New
Source of Market Failure?" Research in Law and Economics, 17:1_22.
Lemley, M.A., 1996. "Antitrust and the Internet: Standardization Problem."
Connecticut Law Review, 28(4): 1041_1094.
Migdal, J., and M. Taylor, 1997. "Thief or Benefactor?" Telephony, January
27, 1997, pp. 46_52.
Mingo, J., 1997. "Nowhere to Hide." Los Angeles Times, Feb. 10, 1997.
Radosevich, L., 1997. "Wired." WebMaster, February, 1997, pp. 26_31.
Schneier, B., 1994. Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source
Code in C. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Sibley, D.S., and D.L. Weisman, 1997. "Raising Rivals' Costs: The Entry of an
Upstream Monopolist into Downstream Markets." Mimeo. Send
correspondence to [email protected].
Taylor, J.A., 1997. "Federal Lawmakers Plan Bill to Ban New Internet Taxes."
Investor's Business Daily, Section A9, January 29, 1997.
U.S. Department of Treasury, 1996. "Selected Tax Policy Implications of
Global Electronic Commerce." Available at
ftp://ftp.fedworld.gov/pub/tel/internet.txt.
Page 536

Law for the Internet
For a well-rounded discussion regarding legal aspects of electronic

communications, see The Law of Electronic Commerce by Benjamin Wright,
1991 (Little, Brown & Co.).
For a case-oriented discussion on Internet crimes and their legal implications,
see CyberLaw: The Law of the Internet by Jonathan Rosenore, 1997
(Springer-Verlag). Rosenore maintains CyberLex
(http://www.cyberlex.com/cyxbar.html), which compiles notable happenings
related to law and the Internet, and he writes for CyberLaw
(http://www.cyberlaw.com), an online Internet law magazine.
Internet Resources
Online Commerce and Taxation
Steward A. Baker, 1996. "State Taxation of On-Line Transactions." Available

at http://www.us.net/~steptoe/221277.htm.
Zak Muscovitch, 1996. "Taxation of Internet Commerce." Available at
http://www2.magmacom.com/~dbell/tax.htm.
Laws Regarding Computers
Electronic Frontier Foundation Computer Law Archive:

http://ftp.eff.org/pub/CAF/law
Page 537
Internet Spam/Harassment Site:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/6006/woodside.html
Internet Telephony
Voice on the Internet is based on the audio standard H.323 and other
multimedia conferencing standards adopted by the International
Telecommunications Union (http://www.itu.ch). See the ITU Standards site
provided by the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium, Inc.,
at http://www.imtc.org/i/standard/i_itustd.htm.
Today, Internet telephony consists mainly of PC-to-PC calls, but gateway

software and hardware enable one to connect to the public network, making
PC-to-phone or phone-to-phone calls via the Internet possible. See the
following sites for gateways:
● Lucent Technologies at http://www.lucent.com/netsys/telephony.html
● Vocaltec at http://www.vocaltec.com
Both large and small companies have entered Internet telephony. See the
following sites for examples:
● Netscape Conference from Netscape at
http://www.netscape.com/comprod/products/communicator/
● NetMeeting from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/netmeeting/
● GXC at http://www.gxc.com
● Delta Three at http://www.deltathree.com
● Net2Phone from IDT at http://www.net2phone.com
For news and commentaries regarding Internet telephony, see Pulver.com's
web site at http://www.pulver.com or VON (Voice on the Net) at
http://www.von.com.

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CHAPTER 12
Future Directions for Economic

Research
The first half of this book has detailed the characteristics of digital products,
the behaviors of the players in electronic commerce—sellers, buyers and new
intermediaries, and the market processes in the electronic
environment—advertising, consumer searches, product choice, and payment.
The electronic marketplace depicted here still resembles the familiar physical
market in that it is organized around the transfer of products. After all, the
basic function of a market, whether electronic or not, is to facilitate the
transactions of goods and services. This resemblance, however, leads to the
wrong conclusion as to what electronic commerce is about. Is electronic
commerce simply an alternative channel for selling products, just as mail-order
businesses and home-shopping networks are alternatives to traditional
merchandising channels? For many sellers of physical products, the answer
might appear to be yes.
However, unlike the mail-order industry or home-shopping networks,
electronic commerce deals with fundamentally different—digital—products
that are manufactured, delivered, and consumed unlike any physical product.
In addition, producers and consumers actively interact to influence and
determine product specification, quality, and price. More important, the
enabling technologies of electronic commerce—computers and
telecommunications
Page 540
infrastructure—are pervasive not only in product transactions but also in other
everyday activities such as work, recreation, communication, politics, and so
on. Electronic commerce, then, is one of the widespread changes caused by the
pervasive use of technology, and a harbinger of yet more fundamental
transformations to come in our economic life.
This new economic environment of the 21st century is alternately called a
digital economy, an information society, or a virtual economy. The authors
prefer virtual economy to emphasize that the new economy is driven by more
than digital or information products. Instead, its decisive characteristics are the
process innovations enabled by the networked, distributed, online
environment. The words "virtual" and "virtual economy" are used loosely here
to refer to technology-assisted online activities, of which electronic commerce
is one. A popular Internet wisdom says:
If it's there and you can see it, it's real.
If it's not there and you can see it, it's virtual.
As discussed later in this chapter, the virtual world is as real as the physical
world, because the former is rooted in the latter. Technologies enable us to
interact with seemingly unreal persons and products online—the process called
the "virtual" process. After first examining various views on the future
economy, this section characterizes the virtual economy by focusing attention
on three aspects of the new economy: virtual products, innovations in virtual
processes, and the convergence in products, markets, and infrastructure. The
following sections provide a frontier map of the new economy to help develop
long-term business strategies as well as a meaningful research agenda.
As hindsight shows, the future is not easy to forecast, even for those experts
who are in the midst of changing technology and market process:
● 1859: "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy!" Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist in his
project to drill for oil.
● 1876: "This `telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no
value to us." Western Union internal memo.
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● 1920s: "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.
Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" David
Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio.
● 1943: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM.
● 1949: "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science.
● 1968: "But what… is it good for?" Engineer at the Advanced
Computing Systems Division of IBM, commenting on the microchip.
● 1977: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their
home." A top executive of Digital Equipment Corp. (Selected quotes
from the "Internet Grapevine: Wet Blankets Throughout History.")
● 1996: "The Internet is the CB radio of the 1990s." An Internet skeptic.
In this book's middle-of-the-road view, we neither believe that the Internet is
only a fad nor that it will obliterate physical products and markets. The goal in
this chapter is to construct a logical picture of the future economy based on
how technological developments will be used for organizational and process
innovations. Like any map describing a frontier, scales and distances may turn
out to be incorrect. Nevertheless, a fairly adequate outline can be drawn
because the new economy is no longer an unknown territory. On the contrary,
signposts abound that point in all directions. Going off in these directions
could lead us to some interesting places, or we could end up in a desert. To
avoid such a calamity, this book will not predict what the killer application
will be in 20 years or even which technology will nail the market next. Rather,
the focus will be on market processes and the direction they will lead us into
the next century.
Many terms are used to characterize the new economy being fashioned by the
growing Information Superhighway:
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● An information economy, because information is the new commodity
● A knowledge-based society in which added value comes from

knowledge-based activities
● An interactive and networked economy where communications and
market processes are interactive and immediate
● A computer-mediated market driven by computer technologies
● A digital economy in which digitization changes physical products into

ones and zeros
These terms attempt to summarize various facets of the new economy, but boil
down to three components. First, the future economy is distinguished by its
product, alternatively described as information, knowledge, or technology.
Second, the market environment consists of distributed network nodes
connected by the telecommunications infrastructure. And third, computers and
software are essential interface devices enabling people to interact with the
networked environment and to create and process products (digitization).
To the extent that digitized products are mostly information, these three
characteristics together seem to equate the future economy with the
"interactive multimedia" industry of telecommunications (network), computer
hardware and software (interface devices), and multimedia contents (product),
which together define a market for producing, selling, delivering, and
consuming contents online. Although the term "interactive multimedia"
highlights the importance of the multimedia sector in the future economy, an
industry-oriented view ignores critical aspects of an economic process where
structural changes are effected in any or all of its market components of
players, products, or processes. These changes include the ways people
communicate, products are customized and sold, and firms and consumer
groups are organized and interact with each other. The future virtual economy
is differentiated from physical worlds by the way it is organized. The
multimedia industries—computers, telecommunications, and (digital)
publishing—are simply the vital infrastructure, or enabling technologies, on
which these changes occur. Before delving into the definition and contents of
the virtual world, the next section will examine what significance these
enabling technologies hold for the future.

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12.1. The Role of Enabling Technologies
Computers and related technological developments have become the hallmarks
of a fast-growing, global economy in the midst of large-scale privatization,
free trade, and cooperation among nations. In discussions about the world
economy in the next 20 years, optimism is most apparent when talk focuses on
the global information infrastructure and electronic commerce. Electronic
commerce illustrates how technology will affect all aspects of economic life
by combining computer technology, telecommunications, and market
transactions into a seamless socioeconomic system. Not surprisingly, the
future is often defined by various applications of computer-related high
technologies.
These technologies and related industries are part of an integrated system just
as automobiles and highways represented an economic system of the 20th
century. To use the popular analogy, the Information Superhighway is the
interstate highway; its contents are automobiles and their cargoes; the Internet
service providers are the access roads; and transmission protocols are the
traffic laws. Traffic congestion can occur on both interstate highways and
Information Superhighways and can be alleviated by expanding highway lanes
or using cables with larger capacity. Faulty planning and investments may fail
to reduce congestion in access ramps to highways and in the last-mile access to
the Information Superhighway. Tolls may be imposed on cars and more easily
on messages moving on information highways.
This highway analogy is relevant and helpful in understanding what the
Information Superhighway signifies and how it operates. Just as the
automobile sector dominates today's economic activities with its associated
industries of automobile manufacturers, new and used car dealers, parts
suppliers and repair shops, motel and travel services, oil companies and gas
stations, insurance services, and roads and highway maintenance and
administration, the new economy will revolve around the many industries
operating on the Information Superhighway—computer hardware, software,
the communications industry (including telephone, cable, satellite, and
wireless), and various
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content providers such as publishing, database, entertainment, and news
organizations. In many ways, this new industrial sector—the interactive
multimedia industry (Tapscott, 1996)—can be considered to be the
automobile-related industry of the 21st century.
However, the highway analogy often fails to convey the importance of the
infrastructure in the broader economic context. Just as today's economy adds
up to more than an economy characterized by automobiles and the interstate
highway system, the virtual economy supported by computers and the
telecommunications industry is more than the sum of these industries.
For example, automobiles and highways triggered substantial changes in the
urban landscape and social organization. We need only think of malls and
suburban sleeper-towns, mobile single families, commuter traffic, and empty
or declining inner cities. Similarly, the Information Superhighway will enable
people to telecommute. This may reduce commuter traffic but may also
encourage urban sprawl or the migration toward sun-belt and pollution-free
rural states. In terms of business and market organization, structural changes
will transform marketing methods into a close cooperation between producers
and buyers, who can dictate what they want in a product and rapidly respond
to changes in prices and product quality. Competitive strategies will see
wholesale changes as market participants interact with each other in a
technologically sophisticated and equitable environment. Accordingly,
taxation must be revised to reflect ubiquitous online transactions, and
government regulation must change to keep pace.
Granted, automobiles and highways play an important role in today's economy
in terms of gross national product (GNP) and resource allocation. Still, the
economy created and supported by these industries is more than an
"automobile economy" or a "highway economy." Similarly, components of the
interactive multimedia industry, however important, are simply tools by which
products are produced and consumed and through which virtual players
interact.
Still, it is of great interest to identify what technologies will become dominant
in the future. Products will look different, depending on what software and
encryption technologies are adopted; response time and prices will be
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affected by whether cable or satellite is used for delivery infrastructure; and
market processes will change if push or pull technology is favored or if PCs or
network computers with applets dominate the future computing platform. How
will the market choose any one product over all the others?
The selection of a particular technology will depend on which market process
is favored by users. For example, the push model of Internet advertising gives
sellers control over marketing, but assumes consumers are passive—and too
lazy to participate. The pull model, on the other hand, recognizes the incentive
of consumers to actively participate in the market process and to reveal their
preferences. For push models to succeed, virtual sellers need to restrict buyers'
active participation, perhaps by promoting technologies that disable such
features. However, sellers often ignore the extent to which virtual buyers are
willing to participate in the market as well as the fact that available
technologies can turn such willingness into action. Thus, to predict which
enabling technology will be favored, consideration must be given to the
objectives of virtual players and what market process will best support those
objectives. The so-called web broadcasting and the new generation of push
technologies are in fact variants of the pull model, because they enable
consumers to select contents. Whether any given delivery scheme is called a
pull or push model, its distinguishing feature lies in the way it interacts with
recipients. In other words, the players and processes determine which of the
enabling technologies will be most useful, not vice versa.
Some of today's nascent technologies are bound to be standards by the year
2015. Important features that will shape the future include computer
processing, storage, communication, and presentation.
● Computer Processing: Computer processing power will continue to
experience exponential growth, doubling in some 18 months. Personal
computers with gigahertz clock speed will offer consumers the
processing power to receive, select, and present daily news, e-mails, and
various information available on the net. The human brain performs
between 10 trillion and 1,000 trillion operations per second. By 2015,
desktop computers will reach the low echelon of this human-like
computational performance. With such computing power, a networked
intelligence,

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----------- and access to the depository of human knowledge, a computer will
behave like an expert who assists in decision-making based on facts and
knowledge.
● Storage: Read-and-write DVDs (formerly known as digital video discs)
will become standard storage devices for digital documents, each disc
holding over 10 gigabytes of data. These discs will replace CDs and
video tapes when audio equipment, video players, digital HDTV, and
computers are all linked together. For larger file storage and backups,
magnetic tapes or hard drives will continue to hold an edge over optical
disks, but files will be stored in central servers. Users will store their
files on these servers and download when necessary. Original files on
the server will be closely linked by icons and aliases to their copies on a
personal computer or display device. Data integrity will be maintained
through automatic updating without the chore of uploading or
downloading.
● Communication: After a transitional popularity of ISDN networks, the
last mile will demand more bandwidth and faster connection (see
Chapter 3, "Internet Infrastructure and Pricing"). While optical fiber
networks will make bandwidth a plentiful resource in the backbone,
congestion in access ramps to the information infrastructure will call for
efficient mechanisms for resource allocation. However, new products
sent over fiber optic networks will be still larger and more complicated.
As a result, bandwidth management will be important, but the challenge
will be to devise products that take advantage of bandwidth rather than
saving on bandwidth. Along with fiber optic cable networks,
high-frequency non-cable networks using microwave and satellite
communications will carry digital signals. There will no longer be
differences between local switching telephone networks, mobile phone
networks, long distance carriers, digital data services, and the Internet.
All digital communications will become interchangeable and
interoperable.
● Presentation: Presentation (display) devices will be integrated: it will be
possible to move digital HDTV sets, computer monitors, security
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monitors, video phones, and various appliances' control screens
wherever desired. Video, audio, data, and multimedia contents—today's
video tapes, music CDs, multimedia CDs, and computer floppy
disks—will be played by using one standard player. World Wide Web
pages will present sophisticated visual simulations of web materials,
instead of two-dimensional versions, using virtual reality languages.
Virtual reality markup languages (VRMLs) will complete the progress
toward a rich and real-life presentation that started with the launching of
the World Wide Web 20 years ago.
These enabling technologies of the 21st century will support the activities of
virtual businesses, governments, and consumer groups in their sales, research,
recreation, and other activities. The goal of this chapter is to describe resulting
changes in the economic and social sphere of the virtual economy, but it
begins by describing the players and other components of this virtual
economy, without which the enabling technologies have no value.
12.2. The Virtual World Is Built on the Physical

World
Mainframe computers, before personal computers largely took over, used to
present a "virtual" computing environment where a user interacted with the
computer through a virtual monitor (dumb terminal), virtual memory, virtual
storage space, and virtual computer—basically, shared CPU time on the
mainframe. That virtual machine became today's desktop computer with its
own CPU, memory, storage drive, and other peripherals, which are no longer
virtual but real in the sense that the components are physical. Server-driven
network computers, which rely on servers for programs and documents that are
downloaded whenever they are needed, may be thought of as a reincarnation
of the mainframe computer, with the help of Java and applets. Network
computers, then, have the potential for combining the advantages of both the
mainframe and PC computing environments—namely, easy network
management and customization.
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The virtuality of network computers stems from the fact that the memory,
CPUs, and storage device are "representations" of physical machines. This in
no way implies they do not exist, but only that what we interact with is a
virtual representation of the real thing. If you interact with an avatar—a
representation of an online person—on your computer screen, that online
person is virtual, but the virtual personality is a representation of a real person.
In the same way, the virtual economy is a particular representation of a
physical economy. If you visit a store in your neighborhood by walking there,
that is part of the physical economy. If you visit that store's online web
storefront—its virtual representation—you participate in a virtual economy.
Some virtual worlds might be created entirely out of imagination—for
example, a virtual Mars colony for games or research. Even that virtual world,
however, is a representation of our concepts. In short, the virtual world cannot
be built without connections with the real world.
Despite this connection, the virtual world behaves differently from the
physical world, because some physical constraints are no longer binding. For
example, a person can be in several (virtual) places at the same time, collecting
price information and conducting negotiations, for example. Everyone—not
just mathematicians or economists—can be extremely smart in calculating
costs and benefits of a project (actually, one's intelligent agent will do the
computing). Changes we foresee in the future virtual economy are based on
the idea that economic processes will look profoundly different as virtual
processes are adopted.
One implication of the virtual world's connection to the physical world is the
need to make that connection as real as possible. Although someone can have
many online personalities, those personalities must represent a real person.
More important, a means to establish a connection is needed. Without this, the
virtual world will no longer be part of the physical world; therefore, any
commercial, legal, or social interaction will become problematic—a
cyberworld populated by autonomous, independent agents and bots. To make
today's Internet a secure commercial medium, we need secure communications
channels and secure payment methods. More important, virtual entities—
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online buyers and stores—must have corresponding physical identifications to
which orders can be shipped and payments can be billed.
Today's Internet world is transitory: e-mail addresses are temporary, host
server names change, and web document URLs move faster than physical
products and stores, leaving consumers stranded. This may be a growing pain
but seems to be in line with the ephemeral nature of electric charges that are
the basis of a digital world—like the electricity itself, virtual personalities
don't lend themselves to permanence. Unlike messages engraved on a stone,
messages stored as digital files can be changed, erased, or destroyed with the
sweep of a magnet. Likewise, digital documents and contracts lack the reality
and enforceability afforded by their paper counterparts. Somehow, virtual
companies conjure up images of nonexistent, ephemeral entities.
By 2015, however, the virtual economy will be as thriving as today's physical
economy. The key element that makes it a secure medium for business and
other activities is the correspondence between the physical world and the
virtual world. It is not the computers who inhabit the virtual world but the
users, through their virtual identities and presence. When computers were said
to have artificial intelligence, many envisioned a doomed world where
computers and robots waged wars against humans. In the same way, the virtual
world appears to some observers to be an autonomous world that will
obliterate our physical existence. That vision is no more real than the idea of
computers taking over our lives. Just as computers have made various tasks
more efficient, the virtual world presents us with a better way of conducting
our lives. Imagine the efficiency of computing power applied not only to word
processing, spreadsheets, tax calculations, and drawings but also to essentially
all human activities from communication to housecleaning and maintenance.
Magnify that image by adding other technological innovations in
communication equipment, household appliances, automobiles, and traffic
control systems as well as process innovations in transactions, education,
personal finance, and entertainment. In the end, what emerges is a virtual
world as a medium on which human imagination, knowledge, and technology
can flourish. The new economy is shaped by what we do with the medium.

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To complete the correspondence between our physical world and the future
virtual world, digital identities will be created around persons instead of
around computers. Today, computers and servers are online personalities of
the Internet, with humans attached to them. For example, a typical e-mail
address is written as [email protected]. Either the person's name or the
server computer address can change. This e-mail address is similar to a postal
address, in which building addresses are more or less fixed, while people move
around. Each person, however, is distinguished by some distinct and
permanent identification, such as a social security or driver's license number.
A similar identification can be given to individuals to establish online identity.
In the physical world, a message cannot be delivered to a social security
number. The difficulty is not in finding a way to deliver mail using social
security numbers but in maintaining a database that links building addresses
with social security numbers. In the virtual world, an elaborate and up-to-date
name server will forward messages to appropriate online persons, no matter
where they are. Likewise, businesses and other economic entities can establish
online identities. This does not preclude people from using online equivalents
of post office boxes or aliases if they choose to do so, but a permanent identity
is essential for verification purposes.
Both governments and private entities will provide these permanent identities,
just as identification cards are issued by governments, schools, and companies.
Multiple identification cards will all point to the same person, which can be
verified legally. Just as it is unlawful to assume multiple identities in legal and
commercial transactions, multiple virtual identities must be prohibited in
virtual transactions as well. As an extension to the physical identity, virtual
identities will be based on legal, permanent, and verifiable identities. Legality
need not be based on governments alone, however. Private certification
authorities will also run a centralized registering system to provide varying
levels of identity classes for different purposes. For the very reason aliases are
accepted (for example, for authors), multiple virtual identities will also be
useful.
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12.3. Components of the Virtual Economy

The virtual economy has as its foundation the virtual market, where
transactions occur in cyberspace. But nontransactional activities—such as
advertising, consumer research, customer service, education, entertainment,
and politics—are affected by the same Internet or online processes. With this
in mind, let us define the components of the virtual economy:
● Virtual players: When buyers, sellers, or intermediaries establish their
online identities, they become virtual market players. This process can
be initiated simply by opening an e-mail account, being connected
online, or setting up an online shop, such as a web storefront. Virtual
players may be automated software agents, which—on behalf of their
owners—can search, gather information, negotiate, and process orders.
By using software agents, a person online can exist in many places at
one time, or one person can have multiple online identities: thus, one
person's multiple preferences can yield multiple online personalities. On
the other hand, a group of consumers or sellers may act as a single
entity. As we discussed in Chapter 1, "Electronic Commerce and the
Internet," a virtual firm differs from a physical firm in both organization
and structure, and a virtual consumer behaves differently online than
offline.
● Virtual products: Product virtualization certainly includes digitization,
which converts products of text, graphic, video, and audio components
into digital files of ones and zeros; however, many non-multimedia
products are also digitized. For example, concept- and process-based
products, such as digital currency, tickets, and house keys, can have
digital counterparts. In this sense, digitization or digitalization entails
more than digital scanning or remastering to change the physical
characteristics of a product; it also refers to a creative conversion based
on the way a product is used. Products that cannot be digitized can be
made into smart products by attaching suitable technological devices.
Some examples are smart electricity meters, home security devices,
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traffic signals, and automobiles, which are networked via microwave
and satellite links. By using online commands, home electricity usage
can be controlled from office or hotel rooms or an e-mail message can
be sent to the automobile to be picked up at work or the airport.
Automobiles, house furnaces, and other smart products will have virtual
interfaces that will interact with people—a process called product
virtualization. Virtual products, therefore, include a far greater number
of physical products than is conventionally assumed.
● Virtual processes: The term "virtual processes" refers to the way market
players interact with products and other players, usually via interactive
and real-time communications. Establishing online ordering and
payment procedures is a necessary first step in enabling virtual market
processes. But non-transactional interactions will become more
important in such areas as the supply-chain management process,
product development using direct consumer inputs, and advertising
based on detailed consumer profiles and negotiations with consumers.
The overall impact of virtual processes goes far beyond achieving a
more efficient transaction; they will fundamentally alter production
processes, consumption, and virtually all aspects of economic activities.
Furthermore, online transactions are changing the way taxes are
collected and government regulations applied. Worldwide transactions
challenge not only the international system of tariffs and income taxes
but also the very theory of international economic growth and
cooperation. In sum, virtual processes mean more than interactivity or
real-time communications, which are characteristics of underlying
technologies. Instead, the importance of virtual processes lies in the
transformation they cause in the relationship between the interacting
parties.
Computers, software, and telecommunications infrastructures form the arena
where virtual players interact with each other and exchange virtual products.
The virtual economy is the game being played in that arena. The rules of the
game are being refined from experience, while the layout of the court changes
as the need arises. Some players are not even sure what game is
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being played today, while others are forming teams and establishing goals for
the game to be played tomorrow. At the moment, the game seems deceptively
similar to the one we have been playing all along; in other arenas, it is unclear
to some why the game would ever change. Yet others point out fundamental
differences, one of which is the convergence among products and industries.
12.4. The Convergence

The virtual economy, by its very nature, facilitates—and in some ways
requires—convergence in products, processes, infrastructure, and market
space. Convergence is a process by which products and producers considered
to be in different markets suddenly find themselves in the same market. If very
broadly defined, all digital products may be said to be competing with each
other. Because their businesses all center around computer technology and
information products, content providers such as television program producers
and multimedia CD-ROM manufacturers are in the same market with network
software and communications equipment vendors, but convergence cannot be
defined so broadly. Telecommunications firms are not in the same market with
online publishers, although their activities may depend on each other, just as
mail-order booksellers depend on the services of post and parcel carriers.
Similar intermarket dependence has often resulted in a mistaken belief that
computer operating system software is in the same market with, for example,
e-mail programs or Internet browsers (see section 11.9).
Convergence, even when defined rather narrowly, is still pervasive enough to
characterize many aspects of the virtual economy. Four major types of
convergence will appear by the year 2015:
● Product convergence. Digitization, for example, has made it
unnecessary to distinguish among different forms of products. Audio
CDs, pictures, and magazine articles all take the same digital format and
can be edited or searched by the same processing software. This is

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----------- sometimes called multimedia convergence. When a product exists in
both digital and physical forms, the convergence may make one form
obsolete. Whether a particular physical or digital form survives will
depend on its usefulness in consumption. For example, computer
catalogs in libraries have almost eliminated catalog index files. The
former has undoubted superiority over the latter in terms of
convenience, search capability, and save and print features. The same
convenience factor may favor printed books over digital books,
however, especially for books that should be read from cover to cover.
For reference books, digital versions are decidedly superior in terms of
consumption.
● Process convergence. One virtual process may be used for different
purposes that used to be carried out by different processes. For example,
a producer may solicit inputs from consumers regarding a feature of its
product. That consumer-revealed information is then used for
production (customization) as well as for marketing, sales, and
negotiations with consumers regarding terms of payment. As a result,
production, marketing, sales, consumption, and customer after-sale
service are all converging into a seamless, integrated process of the
virtual economy. The market-value chain can no longer be divided into
stages and steps, and must not only be continuous but also concurrent.
Such convergence cannot be expected with the broadcast mass media,
which is why electronic commerce is more than an alternative marketing
channel.
● Infrastructure convergence. Various types of communications
infrastructure are converging as well. Infrastructure convergence is
made possible by digitization of products and other technologies that
support the transfer of digital signals. This convergence has made
competitors out of telephone companies, cable operators, and
microwave and satellite operators, which individually used to enjoy a
natural monopoly status. For example, digital telephony on the Internet
takes business from long distance carriers and access charges from
local-loop providers. Satellite systems pose significant competition to
Internet carriers and
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telephone operators by beaming signals directly to PCs and telephones,
as they did with cable television programming. In these converging
markets, the need for uniform fees and taxes is already highlighted by
the struggle between local exchange carriers and Internet service
providers. Beyond a common tariff structure, the convergence will
demand new approaches in government regulation, competitive
strategies, product development, transaction processes, and economic
research and analysis.
● Market space convergence. Finally, globalization implies a spatial
convergence of markets. A classic example of a monopoly is a
geographically isolated firm—for example, the only gas station in an
isolated town. In the virtual economy, there is no monopoly market
power due to geographical isolation unless artificial borders are erected.
Neither will there be the need to have franchise stores all over the virtual
marketplace. One principle of franchising is to guarantee a monopoly
market for each franchiser by not allowing two franchisers to locate next
to each other. With only one market, there is no need for franchising,
although mirroring—the practice of providing identical materials on
different servers to lower the congestion problem—may eventually be
considered to be a form of franchising.
Convergence brings about new opportunities as well as uncertainties. As
products are digitized, they acquire new characteristics that increase their
appeal. For example, a CD-ROM version of an encyclopedia provides search
and link capabilities far exceeding the cross-indexing features provided by
book versions. New products mean new uses, new customers, and new ways of
doing business. Many focus on the opportunity to expand their business, but
the novelty also creates uncertainty.
For example, as the telecommunications infrastructure converges, traditional
boundaries among telephone companies, cable operators, and satellite
operators become unclear. These companies are experimenting in such areas as
video-on-demand services, interactive television, cable modems, online
shopping, and video dial tone to gauge consumer response and future
profitability in their widening playing field. Not knowing consumer demand
and
Page 556
competitors' strategies, however, they are hesitant to plunge into the unknown.
On the other hand, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Craig McCaw (who founded
McCaw Cellular Communications), and other investors are willing to take a
risk in the future of converging infrastructure. Their enterprise is called
Teledesic Corp., which will invest almost $10 billion to place 840 low
earth-orbiting satellites. The plan is to offer broadband connection,
broadcasting, video conferencing, and other telecommunications services
worldwide through Teledesic's satellite network. The project's possible payoffs
may be as large as the size of necessary investments.
Convergence and the Market Structure
The success of Teledesic and similar projects hinges on convergence not only
in telecommunications but also in networking technologies, computer
interface, digital contents, and worldwide markets. As mentioned earlier, the
Information Superhighway environment enables various products and services
to be produced, distributed, and consumed. An efficient, worldwide
information infrastructure will be useless if its usage is limited to a few
activities such as voice communication or online newspaper delivery. If it
entails all types of virtual activities, however, its economic impact will far
surpass that of the modern telecommunications industry. Convergence is the
key factor that will make or break an investment project that aims at
leveraging the future information infrastructure. If successful, any company
that controls the infrastructure is in a position to be a dominant firm in other
areas of the virtual economy.
Suppose a firm is a dominant player in computer operating systems and many
application program markets. It may also extend its dominance in the last mile
from the computer to the information infrastructure through networking
software and access services. By constructing the network itself, such a firm
can integrate all aspects of the infrastructure necessary for virtual processes,
establishing itself as a significant player in content provision as well by
cooperating with other content providers. Virtual contents consist of more than
information products and services. Online payment services, online
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banking, and digital currency services, for example, are necessary for the
virtual market. A firm that can dominate the world digital currency market can
take a lion's share of the seigniorage. Such a firm must possess the reputation
and capital necessary to convince consumers to hold its currency, just as the
wealth and credibility of the U.S. government is the sole guarantee to those
who hold dollars. The process of vertical integration and monopolization in all
these sectors of the worldwide economy has been unimaginable, but is
becoming a reality driven by the convergence in markets and the relaxation
in—or lack of—regulatory market interventions.
An alternative scenario is an efficient, competitive economy where
decentralized markets support many players and allocate resources efficiently.
The first step in promoting such an economy is to eliminate inefficient
mechanisms for resource allocation, induce better quality for products and
services, and guarantee a level playing field for all players. For example, as
was discussed in Chapter 3, usage-based pricing in Internet access services
will enhance quality and allocate resources efficiently. In the software market,
the telecommunications economics, as we discussed in Chapter 11, "Business
and Policy Implications of Electronic Commerce," can enlighten policymakers
about what constitutes anticompetitive behaviors.
Electronic commerce, by its own efficiencies, will also be able to provide
competitive and effective marketplaces for products and services often
monopolized in physical markets. For example, differentiated and customized
products will offer more choices than mass-produced goods, for which a firm
with sufficient economies of scale has the cost advantage. Microproducts,
applets, and microbundles enable short-term contracts between suppliers and
intermediaries and between retailers and consumers. As we discussed in
Chapter 4, "Quality Uncertainty and Market Efficiency," short-term contracts,
in turn, reduce inefficiencies caused by quality uncertainty. Electronic
payment systems based on micropayments and digital currency will facilitate
selling microproducts in addition to bundling and subscription, for which
existing payment mechanisms are adequate. Micropayments will also support a
usage-based copyright payment system, enabling content sellers to meter and
bill for

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small and large uses of their products. In short, electronic commerce enhances
competition by its relentless drive toward efficiencies and open markets.
Convergence is a two-edged sword, opening all markets for a single, powerful
firm to dominate or for all firms to compete in each other's market.
Whether you believe the future economy will be monopolistic or competitive,
various market forces are already in place to influence our economic lives in
the next two decades. We can minimize the uncertainty by understanding the
trends or processes that will be pervasive in the future economy. While
specific business tactics must be based on actual, not forecast, data,
recognizing the trend provides an invaluable insight about what business
strategy will be needed. The remainder of this chapter highlights some
fundamental changes in the way the virtual economy will operate, as we see it
in the year 2015.
12.5. The Virtual Economy in Action

Television has produced generations of couch potatoes shunning outdoor
activities and contentedly receiving preprogrammed messages. The advent of
the virtual world seems to be a more menacing threat than even television, as
outdoor activities can now be played indoors and people have fewer reasons to
get out of their houses to go to libraries, movie theaters, coffee shops, work,
and schools. We become not only couch potatoes wearing virtual reality
helmets, but our world itself is virtual where no real contact is needed. James
Canton of 21st Century Online (http://21net.com/online/) offers this forecast of
the virtual world:
"Entire universes are synthetically generated by individuals,
organizations, and groups designed to meet any need, desire, or
fantasy. Total immersion with full neurosynaptic real-time
stimulation that is preferable to reality emerges, as the majority of
the global citizenry retreat into synthetically created virtual
worlds."
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An experiment in creating a virtual reality world was conducted by LucasFilm,
a division of LucasArts (http://www.lucasarts.com), which started its Habitat
project in 1985. Participants used online personalities called avatars to
represent themselves in interaction with other users and objects. Habitat
resembles a three-dimensional chat room where avatars replace text prompts in
a chat group. Habitat's recent reincarnation is WorldsAway (see fig. 12.1),
offered through the CompuServe online service. Here, users establish online
identities they can change anytime at the Nu Yu shop. Users can build their
own buildings, communities, and activities, including business, religion, and
school.
Figure 12.1 A community scene in WorldsAway. Persons on this screen

represent users, or dwellers, of this virtual community, who can interact with
other participants and even objects, such as the door or toys shown here.
Virtual worlds such as Habitat or WorldsAway are very sophisticated
entertainment platforms. But the fact that this form of entertainment mainly
involves brain activities is perceived as menacing; in some way, virtual reality
seems created the same way hallucination is induced by drugs. The real utility
of such a virtual world, however, is its potential as a sophisticated and real
presentation device. Instead of e-mailing or teleconferencing on telephones,
Page 560
net interactions can be made realistic by using the same technology.
Entertainment is just one of the many uses that will become available as
supporting technologies stop being a limiting factor.
Display devices and interactive platforms in the virtual economy may not be as
sophisticated as WorldsAway's technology promises, but that is not a
precondition to reaping the full benefit of the virtual economy. Two-
dimensional screens and text-based e-mailing are sufficient to bring about the
profound changes we envision in the future. Virtual products and virtual
processes together will change the way we work, shop, entertain, travel,
converse, and live. The convergence of both digital and physical products in
the form of smart products and the pervasiveness of communication imply that
we will be given tools for being in constant contact and control over our lives.
Multiply the freedom afforded by the mobile phone a hundred times, and you
begin to see what the virtual economy will do. The National Information
Infrastructure initiative published by the U.S. government
(http://sunsite.unc.edu/nii/NII-Agenda-for-Action.html) describes the potential
as:
"Imagine you had a device that combined a telephone, a TV, a
camcorder, and a personal computer. No matter where you went
or what time it was, your child could see you and talk to you, you
could watch a replay of your team's last game, you could browse
the latest additions to the library, or you could find the best prices
in town on groceries, furniture, clothes—whatever you needed."
Imagine that this device is also connected to the Internet, to smart appliances
in your smart house, and to your other worldly possessions. With virtual
reality and sophisticated simulation technologies, not only words and text but
also looks and "feels" will be experienced remotely—for example, you could
feel the temperature in your house via the Internet. Even if future presentation
and interface devices are not so advanced, the networked virtual environment
will change our lives significantly.
Suppose Alice is away from her Austin, Texas, home vacationing in Los
Angeles. If anything is out of order, her house alerts her instantly, reporting the
Page 561
problem and what it did to correct the problem within the parameters allowed,
or asking for directions. Alice acknowledges—or sends instructions—and goes
on vacationing.
One evening, Alice receives an e-mail message from Bob, who wants to use
her empty house for two nights. Because her house uses a digital key, Alice
sends the digital file—the house key—over the network, which Bob stores on
his personal card. He goes to Alice's house, enters by using the downloaded
key, and accesses the central computer. By inputting into Alice's computer a
file that stores all his preferences about light, temperature, Internet news, and
radio and TV stations—out of the hundreds of channels available—Bob makes
himself at home. At the same time, Bob's intelligent agent, which connects
itself with Alice's computer, begins notifying others of his whereabouts so
messages can reach him without delay over the Internet.
The house key sent by Alice will expire in two days, at which time the
computer will remove Bob's settings and restore Alice's. The key self-destructs
by the same mechanism old computer hackers used to detonate computer
viruses. If Bob refuses to vacate the house in two days, Alice can override his
control of the house. (Perhaps she can send an e-mail message to her furnace
to raise the room temperature to 100 degrees.)
There is nothing extraordinary in this scenario. In fact, the relevant
technologies already exist:
● Digital keys are already used in hotels. It is a small step to convert the
magnetic key into a digital file, which then can be transferred over the
Internet.
● Smart cards are being introduced for transactions, including copying,
transit payments, and digital coins, to be read by smart-card readers
connected to computers.
● Smart houses and smart furnaces are being controlled by central
computers. These smart products can monitor and store an immense
amount of diagnostic data, with control and monitoring carried out
remotely.

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----------- ● E-mail is seen as the equivalent of modern letter-writing, but it is
basically a file-transfer mechanism, which can handle letters as well as
all types of files. Because of the familiarity and acceptance of e-mailing
among Internet users, consumers will be ready to grasp its future
functions.
● Permanent e-mail addresses are offered freely, which is based on the
forwarding principle. A future virtual player will have a permanent
Internet identity, much like a social security number. Messages will be
forwarded to current servers based on dynamic updating of domain
name servers or net identity servers.
The futuristic aspect in this scenario is in making all these technologies work
in a seamless, interoperable system; therefore, when developing a component
technology, businesses need to have a long-term perspective. For example, the
analog HDTV standard has been abandoned by the Japanese government and
corporations who introduced it early in the 1980s. Analog HDTVs will not
operate with digital HDTVs and are thus unable to participate in the digital
revolution. Going against such a trend will be a disaster. Likewise, smart
products should adopt standard communications protocols so they can be
controlled remotely via the Internet or other prevailing networks. Proprietary
software will isolate the product and diminish its usefulness in the virtual
economy. By visualizing how consumers use their products in the future,
businesses can gain an insight into what features their products must offer as
well.
The Alice and Bob example is decidedly not one of a market transaction
involving sellers and buyers. Electronic commerce will be conducted in the
same way Alice and Bob made contacts, exchanged their messages, and went
about their everyday lives, but with added technologies and features of an
economic system—payment mechanisms, product specifications,
intermediation, and negotiation processes for trade, contracts, and delivery.
The most significant lesson for product sellers in the above example is the
need for interoperability that enables an integrated and seamless consumption
process.
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Future virtual markets invite speculation about what other general features can
be detected to guide us during the next 20 years. The next section will delve
into some market aspects of the future virtual economy.
12.6. Growth of Virtual Intermediaries

Some people predict that intermediaries with a primary role of distributing
products will no longer be needed in electronic commerce. This
disinter-mediation hypothesis is based on the fact that the Internet offers
instant transactions throughout the globe, with consumers able to contact
producers directly. In fact, it isn't even necessary to go to an Internet shopping
mall if a producer's web address is known. Intermediary services, however,
include not only distributional services such as wholesale and retailing but also
insurance, marketing, financial services, and other functions producers may
prefer to delegate to intermediaries. As a result, the virtual economy will be
populated by cybermediaries to provide such essential services as certification,
payment services, quality assurance, copyright clearing, and royalty allocation,
as well as distribution.
The necessity to support commercial transactions in the electronic marketplace
has generated various types of new services and intermediaries, including
cyberbanks, certification services, digital currency servers, electronic malls,
and search services. Future virtual intermediaries, however, will do more than
support transactions—they will also facilitate various market and non-market
processes, such as the following examples:
● Education brokers: Schools and educational institutions perform
intermediary functions as they organize the transfer of knowledge and
skills by mediating transactions between teachers and students. Whether
education is viewed as a collaborative or a transactional activity, the
advent of flexible, distributed communications media and digital
educational materials will demand a wholesale rethinking of how
students learn or are trained for job skills. The new virtual educational
Page 564
service is not an electronic version of conventional classrooms or
distance learning, but a customized, on-demand learning model that
takes advantage of real-time interactions, flexible curricula, and
immense amounts of materials provided by schools, teachers, authors,
and so on. (Hämäläinen, Whinston and Vishik, 1996). While the
tradition of liberal education will persist along with the unreplaceable
value of a school or college, skills training and technical education will
be better served by virtual education brokers.
● Market organizers: A virtual education broker is, in a sense, an
organizer of a market for teachers, course material suppliers, students,
performance or skill certifiers, and business clients who want their
employees trained. Similarly, all types of markets will be organized and
carried out by virtual intermediaries. Although stock-and-commodity
trading floors will be preserved to remind us how physical markets in
the previous century facilitated exchanges of these goods, electricity and
gas will be purchased and delivered in the virtual market, movies and
television programs will be auctioned off and delivered to individual
homes, and political meetings will be held online, where political
parties, influence peddlers, and interest groups will vie for attention.
Intermediaries are those who organize markets or meeting places for
existing products and services, but utilize virtual processes.
● Personalized service providers: Computers have already replaced
personal secretaries who typed and edited your letters, organized
appointments, and so on. Similarly, virtual entrepreneurs will be your
personal shoppers, accountants, travel agents, investment bankers—all
those personal assistants that only a millionaire can now afford. The
enabling technologies are available today. Intelligent software agents
can navigate virtual space, collecting and processing information, and
desktop personal assistants that can learn about your tastes and act on
your behalf are becoming more sophisticated. Although these
technologies will make it possible to automate many tasks, specialists
will continue to have better knowledge and expertise to complete some
tasks,
Page 565
no matter how much information is fed into a software agent. Using
these technologies, personalized service providers will maintain
real-time contact with their customers, executing searches, orders, and
negotiations based on personal preference profiles.
Education brokers and personalized service providers will not only offer old
products in new bottles but will also change the way their services are sold in
the marketplace. For example, instead of going through four years of college
under a rigid curriculum, students will choose courses on the basis of which
are needed—and when—for developing the critical skills employers demand
or finishing an important research project. Individual professors will offer
courses through education brokers, and a course's popularity will be
determined by its usefulness. As a result, the virtual education market will
consist of numerous fragmented course providers instead of a few colleges,
customized and up-to-date products instead of set curricula, and short-term but
continuous transactions, such as just-in-time learning instead of long-term
(usually four-year), one-time transactions. The market process is need-based
and decentralized. At the same time, products and services are fragmented,
personalized, and flexible enough to be configured for a single sale or multiple
sessions.
The market for information and knowledge, just as the education market,
exhibits fragmentation and decentralization in products, content providers, and
consumer uses. The beginning of such a decentralized market is seen in the
World Wide Web, but many observers consider the proliferation of web pages
in today's Internet to be only transitory and contend that they will ultimately
find no market. Instead, electronic commerce awaits the entry of those who
control valuable content, such as publishers, movie studios, and record
companies.
What then is the role of publishers and movie studios? They are intermediaries
who collect, process, and market products made by individual authors and
directors. Newspaper publishers are information intermediaries who employ
authors and reporters and deliver assorted stories in a printed medium. In the
future virtual economy, columnists will sell their wares through a web site.
Reporters will provide real-time accounts of an event on the Internet as

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well, and musicians will distribute demo recordings on the net. However, this
model of direct sales will be limited by the sheer size of the market and the
problem of quality uncertainty, and these products will instead be mediated by
intermediaries. An electronic publishing or multimedia company will be in the
business of buying and selling intellectual properties, but its editing and
packaging function will no longer be affected by the limitations of its
medium—channels, programming slots, or number of pages, for example—or
by the need to appeal to the widest audience to maximize advertising revenues.
Instead, the publisher's focus will be on customizing products and providing
the best value for each customer.
12.7. Customization and Smart Products

Customized products do what consumers want them to do. In the virtual
economy, products will be differentiated to match consumer preferences,
because products allow differentiation and necessary information about
individual preferences is available. Products can be customized by the seller
during the production process or by the buyer after the product is purchased. If
the customization is not needed repeatedly, it will be more efficient to have
producers customize the product. If the need to adjust the product is
continuous, the product will be made smart, offering consumers the ability to
customize it at the site of consumption. And if the product comes from many
vendors, consumers will do the customizing themselves by using some
filtering devices or will go through intermediary agents.
Producer's Customization and Market Research
To customize, producers need to learn about consumer preferences, but how

will they learn about consumers in the future? The raging debate over the use
of consumer information and privacy has given sellers a need to gather
Page 567
consumer information in an overt and direct way rather than covertly, but more
sophisticated technologies will allow future sellers to gather information about
their customers not only covertly but also effectively.
The most direct approach is to ask consumers to supply the information about
themselves. This can be accomplished as part of the ordering process by
presenting consumers with choices about product specifications. For example,
consumers can build a personal computer or a mountain bike online by
choosing among hundreds of styles and parts to suit their needs. If the product
does not allow choices or has to be premanufactured, sellers often solicit
product evaluations to improve quality and specifications. Consumers
generally have an incentive to tell the truth, because misrepresenting their
tastes will result in unsatisfactory products; thus, asking customers will be
profitable in the virtual economy, where digital products, because of their
transmutability, are conducive to customization. However, on some occasions,
firms need information regarding planned products for which consumers' input
may not be valuable because they do not have the same incentive to tell the
truth. Expert analysis is often erroneous, as well, as shown in these examples:
● "A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say
America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you
make." Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields Cookies.
● "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with
the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that
won't last out the year." The editor in charge of business books for
Prentice Hall in 1957. (Selected quotes from the "Internet Grapevine:
Wet Blankets Throughout History.")
Still, firms depend on market surveys and opinion research for strategic
reasons other than product development. The virtual economy will present new
opportunities to gather information through online market research and
learning activities.
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Online Market Research
Current methods of market surveys and focus groups leave much to be desired.
Although open-ended questions usually accompany survey forms, both
consumers and analysts focus on prepared questions, but the answers—ranging
from "highly satisfied" to "not at all satisfied"—only provide insights into
predetermined and preselected areas, which might not be the problem at all,
and the answers themselves are questionable when consumers have no proven
incentive to tell the truth. Furthermore, survey forms and techniques limit
responses to verbal communication.
Logging and analyzing web access is an indirect method of observing
consumer reactions, similar to watching through one-way mirrors. While this
practice is under criticism, an online survey environment can be created to
mimic many advantages of web log data. Using the virtual environment, this
method will allow consumers to express their opinions not only verbally but
through nonverbal actions and feelings. The key element in a virtual survey
method is to overcome the restricting factors of survey forms that ignore
nonverbal communications, yet it's difficult to interpret in a meaningful way
these nonverbal forms of communication, which often consist of images,
metaphors, and other cognitive expressions for which no interpretation
consensus exists.
Experimental research focuses on consumer storytelling through images
(Zaltman, 1996). Its premise is that most social communication is nonverbal
and thoughts can occur as images. For example, when consumers are asked to
bring images to describe their experience with a product, they may bring a
picture of one of their pets or a rainstorm. A picture of a dog represents
faithfulness, of course, while the storm hints at turmoil. Similarly, Internet
users are asked to characterize the color of their e-mail messages. Low opinion
about e-mail is represented by gray or black colors, while bright colors such as
pink and yellow indicate more excitement.
While this approach to nonverbal communications touches on an important
shortcoming in traditional survey methods, images and metaphors
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themselves are hard to interpret. To put them in words violates the very
premise of "not being able to express in words." However, a less ambitious
research environment can be constructed on the Internet. Instead of using
worded questions and asking for ratings, consumers will be presented with
images, games, and other interactive materials. By carefully constructing the
experimental environment, researchers can capture subjects' natural behaviors
and reactions by using cameras, audio inputs, sensitive mice, and so on to
monitor actions, emotions, and feelings. Instead of inviting consumers to
participate in experiments, advertisements and promotional free products will
provide a research environment that feeds data back to the seller. In a sense, all
potential customers will become focus groups, and the products themselves
will offer opportunities to gain information about consumers.
Online Learning
Consumers form groups on the net to congregate with like-minded people and
exchange opinions. UseNet newsgroups divide consumers by interest into
hierarchical groupings. Thus, those who are interested in computers frequent
groups in the comp hierarchy while art-inclined persons participate in rec.arts
groups. Further divisions of interest result in rec.arts.books for book lovers and
rec.arts.books.hist-fiction for those who favor historical novels. Along with
numerous mailing lists organized to address specific interests, these online
communities provide sellers a window for watching consumers learn from
each other. The power of word-of-mouth marketing has induced many sellers
to monitor messages and, if requested, provide relevant information as dutiful
members of the interest group.
There is no indication that today's sellers actively analyze messages posted in
these online communities. Even product-specific mailing lists managed by
sellers disseminate information but do not allow postings or feedback from
subscribers. The vast number of messages being exchanged may be a deterrent
to any firm contemplating the mining of such data. Instead, sellers rely on
traditionally mined data provided by web search operators, market research
firms, or brokers of processed customer data. The future virtual economy,

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however, will consist of finely segmented online communities whose
participants include the majority of potential consumers. By becoming an
active member of these online groups, a seller will maintain contact with all its
customers and find out about competitors' strategies as well as consumer
responses.
As producers and sellers learn in a networked market environment, their
product selection and pricing strategies will affect both their customers and
their competitors. For customers, the issues will be the gains in
better-matching products and the potential losses in discriminatory prices. For
competitors, the strategic value of new information will depend on its
availability to competitors. For example, if the data on the Internet is public, it
will offer no competitive advantage, because all competitors will have the
same information. However, if the data is made private, such information is
strategically valuable; therefore, the cost of securing and processing such
information will be weighed against the gains in the market share or the profit.
In all likelihood, the profit potential will justify monitoring and analyzing
public messages in some fashion.
Current economic and marketing models do not account for interactions
between producers and consumers. The market somehow functions to match
supply with demand. As the uncertainty about product quality and even about
the identity of transacting partners grows in the virtual marketplace, however,
market agents will no longer be passive. The availability of information and
the technology to gather and process such information is the hallmark of an
electronic market such as the Internet. Economic models, then, will have to
incorporate the active learning by producers and the effects of such action on
product choices, prices, competition, and consumer welfare. Just as researchers
and corporate employees can collaborate and learn from each other on the
Internet, firms and consumers will determine market choices through
interacting and learning from each other. Such interactive learning will be
pervasive in the future virtual economy.
Page 571
Consumer Customization
Customization by consumers occurs in two stages. First, products are

customized through a selection process in which consumers eliminate
unwanted portions of a product. Second, products are modified to suit
consumer tastes on receipt. For example, consumers may ask an online news
service to send them news about a specific firm but not about others. Either the
news producer or an intermediary personalizes the product and delivers it. The
second stage of customization is not needed in this case. Alternatively,
consumers may receive the news feed without selecting, but—after receiving
all of it—discard unwanted parts. In terms of bandwidth efficiency, the second
type of delivery is undeniably inferior, but it allows customers more control
over the use of information.
The selection process by which consumers weed out unwanted products is
called filtering. In the age of information overload, information filtering offers
consumers not only the power to select products but also the means to
automate repeated tasks by training filtering agents to recognize what is
wanted and not wanted. For example, e-mail from unwanted sources can be
filtered out by a software agent that recognizes the user's preference. The same
preference profile can also be used to schedule meetings based on certain
principles, such as no meetings between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.; project A takes
precedent over all other projects; or meetings should be based on the proximity
of their location. Software agents are either fed such information by the user or
programmed to learn by observing and analyzing the user's actions. The
analysis typically consists of statistical score-keeping; that is, if a user repeats
the same action twice or more, the agent recognizes it as the user's preference
(Maes, 1994).
A logical extension of filtering agents in the future will be a smart product
with the capability to learn and adapt to each user's preference. Instead of
being endowed with this capability, all products will have an open interface to
Page 572
interact with any intelligent agent trained by a consumer. Thus, each consumer
in the virtual economy will have an intelligent agent—a virtual alter ego—to
monitor and sort incoming e-mail messages, search for product vendors, alert
the user for new products of interest, interact with smart products to configure
them to match the user's preferences, and so on. When you order an online
article, negotiations will be conducted between your agent and the seller's.
After you buy smart computer software, your agent will customize it for you.
Your car, house security system, hot water boiler, coffeemaker, and centralized
heating system will all be smart and configured and monitored by your agent,
which will alert you and recommend a course of action when something is out
of order. You will be able to display daily temperatures, gas and electricity
consumption, boiler efficiency, and other data on your computer or HDTV
screen, analyze the data, and exchange the information with others.
To accomplish this, smart products will have to be furnished with the
capability to be customized and have an interface for interacting with smart
agents. Such an interoperability requirement will not produce a single
dominant product but will require some standardization for those features that
need interfacing (see the discussion about interoperability in section 11.9). At
a minimum, any smart product should adhere to a communications protocol in
order to communicate or receive instructions through, for example, e-mail.
With filtering agents and smart products available to consumers, the debate
between push-and-pull models of marketing will become pointless. Consumers
may in fact prefer sellers to push all information to them so they can choose
what is relevant, instead of leaving that decision to the sellers. When buyers
have all the information, a seller's bargaining position will deteriorate
accordingly; thus, sellers will choose what information to send, but buyers will
have control over whether to receive that message. The effectiveness of the
pull model will also be limited by the amount of information sellers are willing
to provide. To market customized products, both sellers and buyers must
communicate in a process of push-and-pull negotiation.
Page 573
12.8. Globalization and Cybernations

While the virtual world will no longer have national boundaries, virtual
communities and groups will abound. Instead of political boundaries, the
virtual world will be divided by interests and preferences. In electronic
commerce, globalization will afford sellers access to a larger market with
regard to geographical area, but product differentiation and customization will
mean a smaller market for each product.
Globalization is aided by the removal of tariffs and other regulatory measures
based on geographical boundaries. The global telecommunications accord and
the information technology agreement pioneered by the World Trade
Organization during the last years of the 20th century have opened up a truly
international trade in computers, telecommunications equipment, and software.
A uniform commercial code and an income tax policy for international trade
will further stimulate exchanges in digital products. Most important, a fully
convertible digital currency will facilitate international transactions. As a result
of these developments, a product's market will be defined not by geographical
areas but solely by its customers.
Globalization, however, will not break down all market boundaries, as
customers still have different tastes. While spatial convergence will remove
geographical market boundaries, virtual communities will act as distinct and
coherent groups, just as physical markets and nations do today. These
cybercommunities or cybernations will be made up of like-minded consumers
and businesses, congregating and interacting online. Sellers will want to know
who participates in such virtual communities and how they interact.
In the virtual marketplace, consumers will learn about product quality from
each other, while sellers will observe consumers' reactions to their products
and marketing strategies. What will the implications be of such learning by
agents in a market? For one thing, unlike today's emphasis on strategic
interactions between firms, the electronic marketplace will make apparent the

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need for firms to interact with consumers and for consumers to interact with
other consumers and firms. Specifically, consumers will not be myopic, but
will become strategic players in the market. Cybernations and
cybercommun-ities will become powerful instruments in influencing prices,
product quality, and competitive behaviors. To counter this trend, firms will
develop market strategies based on their interactions with consumers. Indeed,
demand preferences can be manipulated, quality information (advertising) can
be controlled, and reputation or brand loyalty can be cultivated, all by actively
participating in virtual communities.
Cybercommunities are a natural outgrowth of today's Internet societies, where
the process of word-of-mouth dissemination of information is greatly
facilitated by personal e-mail, mailing lists, chat lines, newsgroups, and other
discussion forums, which can occur concurrently and reach every corner of the
globe.
Although we mentioned earlier that sellers are not yet actively gathering and
processing information from messages posted in UseNet newsgroups, some
recognize the value of doing so. Firefly (http://www.ffly.com) is an example of
intelligent software agents observing, recording, and processing online data
logged by users of various Firefly communities in an attempt to learn more
about consumers. Processed or mined data results are then offered to
producers, who use Firefly communities as avenues for targeted advertising.
Software agents may even offer a review of a new product, using their
knowledge about the preference of each community.
To succeed in this business venture, Firefly faithfully duplicates Internet
communities. For example, there are newsgroups and chat areas for movie
buffs, country music fans, or cartoonists. Such areas may be subdivided more
finely by using a hierarchy of books, for example, and then fiction versus
nonfiction, and so on. It is also possible to form groups based on different
characteristics, such as authors or writing style. A list of an individual's
membership, the intensity of participation, and such will provide a detailed
preference profile of the person. A bookseller may find such a market segment
and post a review directly or through Firefly's software agent, acting like a
member
Page 575
of the group. By observing the message exchange and downloading pattern
and correlating this with sales and other data, the seller may modify the
product, change its advertising strategy, or find another target group. Knowing
this, consumers may also engage in strategic behaviors to influence the seller's
decisions.
The potential value of cybercommunities will be tempered by technical
problems regarding the accuracy and usefulness of data gathered by software
agents in cybercommunities. The window of time over which data is used to
calibrate the preference profile of each community is an important
consideration in a rapidly changing environment such as the Internet. Software
agents need a substantial period of time to learn and match the preference of a
group. In a rapidly changing market, however, the learning speed of agents
may be too slow to be helpful. The group may change its composition and
membership, or the group as a whole may undergo a shift in preferences. Such
dynamic changes can perhaps be eliminated by requiring strict guidelines for
join a group, but if there is such a guideline in the first place, there will be no
need to "learn" about the consumers. On the other hand, too short a window of
observation may yield very unreliable estimates about the preferences.
Despite these potential issues, marketing differentiated and customized
products will depend on information gathered in cybercommunities. Mass
market products are well suited for mass media advertising. On the other hand,
niche market products often are too costly to advertise on such a scale,
although the initial lack of people's knowing about and trying out the product
will be detrimental to future sales (McFadden and Train, 1996). For niche
products and experience goods consumers are wary of trying, a discussion
group composed of people with similar tastes could become a major source of
product information. If someone tries out a new product and posts an opinion
of its quality, all other members will value the information, because they share
the same tastes. And as we have seen earlier, the seller, as a business member
or acting as a consumer, may offer a review to influence opinion or promote
the product in an effort to induce some consumers to try it out.
Page 576
12.9. Market-Clearing Mechanisms

An efficient market leaves no excess supply or demand. In reality, most
markets fail to match supply with demand at least temporarily, leaving some
sellers with excess inventories and some buyers without desired products or
services. One reason for this is the geographical distance that prevents the
simultaneous participation of all sellers and buyers. Another reason may be the
lack of information or the failure for a market to be coordinated. Still other
reasons that prevent efficient market clearing include high transaction costs,
and the bounded rationality of the agents—that is, sellers or buyers are not
capable of transacting in the most efficient way.
A virtual market offers some reprieve to many of these sources of market
inefficiency. An electronic market not only offers a cheaper, more
cost-effective way to transact business, but also brings about a more efficient
market-clearing mechanism, because it is not limited by spatial constraints or
inefficiencies in conducting transactions. A typical electronic market consists
of buyers and sellers, a commodity or commodities, and a price-discovering
mechanism, such as a simultaneous ascending price auction or a sealed bid
auction. An electronic market—unlike such physical auction houses as the
New York Stock Exchange—removes the physical barrier for transactions.
The long-run significance of an electronic market, however, will be its
capability to create an efficient decentralized market, where the price-setting
mechanism closely resembles the idealized process of tatonnement—a gradual
or step-by-step market correction to match supply and demand—but in a fast
automated fashion.
Already, pioneering electronic markets have been developed on the Internet,
where such an enterprise duplicates many actions of a physical market. It
offers a meeting place for buyers and sellers, a negotiation procedure,
products, auxiliary services such as quality verification and payment clearing,
and—sometimes—delivery service. Computers and electronic games are
auctioned off on the Internet. Aucnet (http://www.aucnet.com) offers a
clearing market among used-car dealers. Stock exchanges maintain online
trading services for brokers. Governments auction off treasury bills
electronically, and

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Page 577
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web advertising spaces are auctioned off to the highest bidders in real-time.
Other interesting examples of clearing markets are given by McAfee and
McMillan (1997).
Future electronic markets will be more than a simple use of technologies,
whose impact is often in terms of cost savings. In some cases, an electronic
market may open a new opportunity to trade a product that may not have been
possible otherwise. In other words, an electronic stock exchange is more than
an automated version of the New York Stock Exchange. As McAfee and
McMillan (1997) illustrate, an electronic market can effectively replace a
regulated market with a decentralized market. The result is often increased
efficiency while avoiding many problems associated with bureaucratic
administration and the lack of incentives. Regulation is often motivated
because of the failure of the market to allocate resources. Nevertheless, in
many cases, electronic markets succeed in overcoming the coordination
problems observed in physical markets.
The railway industry, to give an example, is often a natural monopoly and is
regulated as such. In such a market, one firm will be more efficient and thus
able to provide the service at the lowest possible cost, while two or more
competing firms may not survive. In Sweden, however, the central rail
administration, who allocated the use of tracks centrally, was instructed to sell
private firms access to these tracks. Opponents argued that, given the
complexity of train routes and timing schedules, such a decentralized market
allocation was impossible, not to mention a threat to train safety. Brewer and
Plott (1995), through simulated experiments, demonstrated that not only was
such a decentralized allocation possible but the result would be increased
efficiency. The experiments consisted of several sessions of electronic bidding,
where bidders did not know competitors' valuations of tracks. Nevertheless,
the analysis of the results showed that actual bid winners—the final allocation
of tracks—corresponded to the most desirable theoretical distribution. In this
example, an electronic market was shown to be more than an automated
physical market, as the former was able to achieve what the latter failed to do.
In this sense, an electronic market is not just an application of new technology
to existing markets—it is a new type of market.
Page 578
Through electronic commerce, then, many goods will be allocated more
efficiently, especially those regulated products and services now being targeted
for deregulation. The trend toward deregulation is spurred by the belief that
deregulated industries will result in better product choices, lower prices, and
higher consumer welfare, but it is often unclear how these industries, which
have been considered to be natural monopolies in which competition harms
consumers, can be made competitive when resources are allocated efficiently.
The answer will lie in virtual electronic markets by which a complex problem
of resource allocation and price discovery processes can be coordinated. As
discussed in Chapter 11, "Business and Policy Implications of Electronic
Commerce," the web is already used to coordinate interstate electricity
wholesale and retail wheeling. In the virtual economy, different types of
market-clearing mechanisms may be offered at the same time for the same
product. Selling by posted prices may be more efficient than bid-based
auctions if both sellers and buyers are fairly familiar with each other's values,
that is, consumers' willingness to pay and the cost of production. On the other
hand, auctions may be more efficient if there are many market agents and the
supply and demand are somewhat uncertain. Market brokers may operate these
mechanisms and compete through market experimentation and efficiency.
12.10. Summary
This chapter looked at a broader picture of the future virtual
economy—electronic commerce as a market with its unique market agents,
products, and processes. Popular articles and movies on the subject of virtual
reality conjure up a future where the physical world ceases to be important or
is in a power struggle with the virtual world. A truly virtual world that can
compete with the physical world only exists in a science fiction series such as
Star Trek, where
Page 579
holodecks create real-life characters and an environment with which humans
can interact. Even with their 24th century technologies, however, holodeck
characters sometimes go awry—it was they, after all, who attempted to take
over the ship itself in one episode. Luckily, the virtual world in the year 2015
will not be anything close to that vision.
The virtual world pictured here parallels our physical world in many respects.
The most important change it will bring lies in the way we will interact with
each other and with products—in other words, virtual processes.
Technological developments in the next 20 years will be substantial, but the
seeds of the virtual world—virtual players, products, and processes—are
already here. The virtual world that knows no physical boundaries turns out to
be cybercommunities and cybernations. While these interest groups exist only
virtually, in one sense they are an extension of today's segmented markets. The
difference, of course, is that these groups will have the means and reasons to
be more coherent and will become a force to reckon with in the marketplace
and in politics as well.
A hidden agenda in highlighting the features of the future world is to suggest
some areas of interest for economic research. As a commodity market, the
virtual marketplace presents fertile ground for research in all areas of
economic theory. Aside from Internet economics (which deals with resource
allocation and pricing for information infrastructure), cost structure and pricing
models for information products have already interested many economists.
More rigorous research is needed in digital products, product differentiation
and customization, electronic search and advertising, copyrights, and digital
currency. This chapter also emphasized the role of producer and consumer
learning and the importance of consumer groups and actions, which is often
neglected in firm-oriented theory of industrial organization. It is to be hoped
that the virtual economy described here will guide both researchers and
businesses in evaluating developments in electronic commerce in an
appropriate and useful context.
Page 580
References
Brewer, P. J. and C. R. Plott. "A binary conflict ascending price (BICAP)
mechanism for the decentralized allocation of the right to use railroad tracks."
Social Science Working Paper, #887, California Institute of Technology, 1995.
Hämäläinen, M., A. B. Whinston and S. Vishik. "Electronic markets for
learning: Education Brokerage on the Internet." Communications of the ACM,
39(6) 1996: 51_58.
Maes, P. "Agents that reduce work and information overload."
Communications of the ACM, 37(7) 1994: 31_40.
McFadden, D. L. and K. E. Train. "Consumers' evaluation of new products:
learning from self and others." Journal of Political Economy, 104(4) 1996:
683_703.
McAfee, R. P. and J. McMillan. "Electronic markets." Readings in Electronic
Commerce. Ed. R. Kalakota and A. B. Whinston. Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley, 1997. 293_309.
Tapscott, D. The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked
Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1996.
Zaltman, G. "Metaphorically speaking." Marketing Research, 8(2) 1996:
13_20.

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Internet Resources
Smart Products
For home automation projects, see Electronic House Online at:

http://www.electronichouse.com.
For appliance computerization, see 21st Century Boiler Controls at:

http://www.facilitiesnet.com/NS/NS3mk5b.htm.
Habitat and Virtual Communities
Douglas Crockford's Habitat Page at:

http://www.communities.com/people/crock/habitat.html.
WorldsAway at:
http://www.worldsaway.com.
The 21st Century Technologies
Assorted articles and web sites that discuss the future in selected subjects
include:
● Education: Vision 2010 at http://www.si.umich.edu/V2010/
● American embassy and the 21st century information technology:

http://www.info.usaid.gov/faiig/wgrecs4.txt
● Workers and workplace:
http://www.saigon.com/~vacets/articles/dungh1.html
Page 582
● GIS: http://www.gatekeeper.com/stormwater/information/gis_full.html
● Medicine and healthcare:
http://cfm.mc.duke.edu/chair/pcc/public/ahc/player.htm
● Court technology:
http://www.ncsc.dni.us/ncsc/bulletin/future/future.htm
● Banking: http://www.grantthornton.com/gtonline/finance/currency
/fall96c.htm
● Global economy: http://www.cgtd.com/global/gat-prs.html
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Economics of Electronic Commerce

Chapter 1 - Electronic Commerce and the Internet

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About this book

Macmillan Technical Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana

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Electronic Commerce and the

Distributed and Networked Computing

A distributed computing environment consists of multiple sites (or computers)

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Distributed computing presupposes a network. Large corporations,

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Figure 1.1 The Internet Society home page.

Two-way Communications and the Web

The Internet can be thought of as a two-way broadcast system with the

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Figure 1.2 Types of data sent over the NSFNET backbone.

Electronic Commerce Examples

Technology is transforming many aspects of business and market activities. In

● Paying for goods and services

● Online publishing of corporate documents

● Online searches for documents, projects, and peer knowledge

● Distributing critical and timely information to employees

● Managing corporate finance and personnel systems

● Manufacturing logistics management

Electronic Commerce as a Communications Network

At the core of traditional electronic commerce is the use of electronic means to

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Electronic Commerce of Digital Products

Despite the broadening view on electronic commerce, the commercial Internet

Figure 1.3 Electronic commerce areas.

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Figure 1.4 The growth of electronic commerce areas.

Commercial Potential of the Internet

Businesses need to place electronic commerce within the context of broader

1.3.Market Characteristics of Electronic Commerce

Current Commercial Uses of the Internet

Figure 1.5 The growth of the Internet Hosts (1981_1996).

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