Title: Productivity of internet shops

Authors: Paul Alpar, Naveen Donthu

Addresses: School of Business Administration and Economics, Philipps University Marburg, 35032 Marburg, Germany. ' Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA

Abstract: The success of internet shops can be assessed in various ways. Here, we measure how well the respective websites transform their inputs into outputs. The model variables are based on the characteristics of shopping websites as a computer information system and a sales channel. The choice of variables is verified with statistical models while the actual assessment of the economic performance and benchmarking of the shops is carried out with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The data for the models are obtained from three different sources: site analysis with a web crawler, website visiting statistics collected by a market research firm, and measurement of visitors| perceptions.

Keywords: internet shops; electronic shopping; electronic business; data envelopment analysis; DEA; structural equation modelling; SEM; partial least squares; PLS; canonical correlation analysis; CCA; online shopping; e-business; website outputs; information systems; sales channels.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEB.2007.014510

International Journal of Electronic Business, 2007 Vol.5 No.3, pp.243 - 262

Published online: 12 Jul 2007 *

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