Article 7 Battle of the Channels: Impact Tablets on E-Commerce

Question 1

What is being studied?

Answer 1

The role of having an additional device for an online retailer.
The causal impact of tablets on e-commerce.

Question 2

Why is this important to study?

Answer 2

Because it provides retailers insight into how they can increase their sales volume and revenue in the emerging tablet economy.

Question 3

How and where is this research conducted?

Answer 3

A natural experiment was used. Data was gathered from Taobao (Alibaba) where the iPad app was introduced.

Users and non-users of the iPad were matched using PSM. Research was conducted by using a difference-in-differences analysis.

Question 4

What are the main findings?

Answer 4

• Tablets act as a complementary product for the smartphone channel.
• Tablets acts as a substitute product for the PC channel.
• Tablets spur casual browsing, leading to the purchase of more impulse products and a wider variety of products.

Question 5

What are the limitations?

Answer 5

• Data doesn’t contain sales from offline channels.
• Data doesn’t contain sales patterns of new users that came after the tablet introduction: impact may be underestimated.