TY  - JOUR
A1  - Morath, Florian
A1  - Münster, Johannes
T1  - Online shopping and platform design with ex ante registration requirements
T2  - Management Science. Articles in Advance
N2  - We study platform design in online markets in which buying involves a (nonmonetary) cost for consumers caused by privacy and security concerns. Firms decide whether to require registration at their website before consumers learn relevant product information. We derive conditions under which a monopoly seller benefits from ex ante registration requirements and demonstrate that the profitability of registration requirements is increased when taking into account the prospect of future purchases or an informational value of consumer registration to the firm. Moreover, we consider the effectiveness of discounts (store credit) as a means to influence the consumers’ registration decision. Finally, we confirm the profitability of ex ante registration requirements in the presence of price competition.
KW  - e-commerce
KW  - privacy concerns
KW  - security concerns
KW  - registration cost
KW  - platform design
KW  - monopoly
KW  - price competition
KW  - information
KW  - digital transformation
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/42926
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-429260
SN  - 0025-1909
SN  - 0025-1909
N1  - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You are free to download this work and share with others, but cannot change in any way or use commercially without permission, and you must attribute this work as “Management Science. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2595, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.”
VL  - 74
SP  - 1
EP  - 21
PB  - INFORMS
CY  - Hanover, Md
ER  -