Pricing Strategies of Online Shops

Abstract

With the development of shopping via the Internet the pricing strategies of traditional and online stores began to differentiate. On one hand this was due to the different possibilities of price analysis by potential customers of both type of stores, and on the other hand in accord to the genaral belief that prices at online stores should be lower than in traditional ones. The specificity of the pricing strategies of online stores however results from much larger number of factors. The subject of the article was the analysis and diagnosis of the current state of the price for-mation process in companies operating in the Internet performed based on literature, results of various studies and our own survey of qualitative nature. On the basis of these sources a belief has been obtained that at online stores the same variety of solutions in terms of price can be found as at traditional stores. Attention was paid primarily to the specific conditions of the pricing strategies of Internet enterprises, which could include the relative ease of comparing prices, a direct relation-ship between the price level and the image of a seller and a much greater opportunities for dynam-ic pricing. The article also distinguished the factors influencing the choice of a particular pricing strategy. Attention was paid to both, to those associated with the specific nature of buyers and purchasing processes on the Internet and to the conditions of operation of the online stores wchich largely differ from those at traditional shops.