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The Internet enables businesses to acquire a great deal of information, including prices in the open markets. In this study, we investigate what the value of reference price information is to a company in the market and how the company can make use of such information. Using business analytics, we were able to estimate prices of used cars for a rent-a-car company. The results show that a smart pricing information system is useful for collecting online reference price information and for estimating future prices of used cars and rental prices.

TicketMonster is a deal-of-the-day coupon site which utilizes the Internet and mobile infrastructure to offer deals in Seoul and other cities around Korea on services at restaurants, cafes, spas, and so forth. Following the company's rapid expansion, management made the decision to expand the scope of TicketMonster beyond Korea's borders with the aim of taking on other Asian markets. To this end, TicketMonster acquired Everyday.com.my, the biggest social shopping site in Malaysia. However, it was believed that simply competing in markets across Asia would not enable TicketMonster to claim sufficient market share in light of the international expansion of Groupon and LivingSocial, two online daily deal global giants. Furthermore, competition in the online daily deal sector in Korea had escalated as local, regional and international players vied for consumer awareness and loyalty. On top of an advertising war, competition grew to the point where several sites began selling coupons while knowingly taking a loss by lowering commissions in order to attract competitive products or services for their respective deals and at times paying for the services themselves. In mid-2011, U.S.-based LivingSocial made an offer to buy TicketMonster in order to strengthen its presence in Asia. Considering these changes and challenges, what are the strategic issues regarding TicketMonster and how should the company deal with the offer to deploy its transfer of ownership to LivingSocial? This case will help readers form an opinion on the related management issues and analyses.

In a buyer-seller transaction process, `value for money,` a measure of quality-price-ratio, is one of the most important criteria for buyers` purchasing decisions. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a method which helps online shoppers choose the best of several sellers offering homogeneous goods. We suggest FDH (free disposal hull) model, an applied model of data envelopment analysis (DEA), for online buyer-seller transactions and verify it with the data from an Internet comparison shopping site. For this purpose, we analyze consumer choice behaviors by examining how consumers respond to different sale conditions such as price, brand, or delivery time. Then, we implement a seller recommendation system to support buyers` purchasing decisions. We expect our FDH model to provide valuable information for rational buyers who want to pay the least price for high quality products/services and to be used in implementing automated evaluation processes in micro transactions. Moreover, we expect that our results can be utilized for sellers` benchmarking strategies which help sellers be more competitive by showing them how to attract buyers.

Achieving an effective business design across the Internet and the off-line channel is a critical concern for a hybrid firm's choice of pricing strategy. Two pricing models are proposed to examine how consumer channel migration (one-way channel interaction from the traditional sales channel to the Internet) affects pricing strategy. One model has no interaction between the Internet and off-line channels. The other includes the possibility of one-way migration to the Internet channel and incorporates consumers' channel-switching costs and loyalty to the firm. The two models offer interesting results for understanding traditional and Internet-based selling. A high level of channel migration leads a firm to manage the two channels as one. With low channel migration, in contrast, the firm should optimize and manage each channel separately. The models had two main findings: (1) the level of channel migration determines a hybrid firm's pricing strategy; (2) a hybrid firm's price-level choice should be determined by the on-line demand proportion of its business. The modeling results were validated with empirical analysis for 10 large South Korean e-commerce firms by comparing prices in different product categories for various types of hybrid firms and Internet-only firms. This research offers new marketing strategy insights for managers of hybrid firms who wish to optimize price-setting decisions based on interactions between distribution channels and the intensity of the firm's involvement in the on-line channel.

Increased network speed has opened up new opportunities for developers to distribute their products as shareware through the Internet. This paper analyzes the interrelationships among key issues that are central to the software industry, including uncertainty, piracy, shareware quality and full version price. We show that customers' aversion to uncertainty of software quality tends to increase shareware quality while piracy tends to decrease it. Counter-intuitively, the perceived quality of the full version software or the trust towards the software developer does not affect the full version price and the profit of the firm when piracy is prevalent.

Electronic Commerce is shaping many of our daily life tasks and with the introduction to new aspect of social interaction on the net a new phenomenon is emerging in the arena of e-commerce known as social commerce. Within this new trend in social commerce Instagram a simple yet powerful app is now playing a new role in combining both the advantage of social network with it design feature and capabilities. In this paper we are looking at how a simple yet power picture based social network app like Instagram is shaping the electronic commerce arena around the world and within Kuwait as a given example. Instagram became a major part of most Kuwaiti individuals. In Kuwait Instagram became an hourly stop to many instead of daily stops. Instagram changed from being a voyeuristic tool to becoming a handy shopping outlet. Everything from exotic pets to home car washing and detailing service could be found at Instagram. Everyone is using Instagram in Kuwait; from the old widower selling home cooked traditional dishes to the multimillion real estate investing company. In this paper we are exploring the factors and barriers that helped Instagram become a social commerce outlet for many users in Kuwait and around the world.

The Internet enables businesses to acquire a great deal of reference information, including the price in the open markets, for estimating appropriate prices of the assets to sell off. However, companies may be unsure whether this information is useful for their pricing strategies. In particular, what is the value of reference price information to a company in the market and how can the company make use of this information? Using a multiple regression model for price estimation applied to used cars for a rent-a-car company, we propose a framework to collect the reference price information, in order to estimate appropriate prices in the future. In this process, we identify factors that affect the estimated prices. The result is a new information system that collects online reference price information and provides very accurate information in estimating future prices of used cars and rental prices resulting from the estimation.

NHN Corp. is a top Internet portal operator in Korea. The Internet giant was created by merging Naver, the search engine company, with, Hangame, the game portal company, in early 2000s. The merger was evaluated as one of the most successful M&A s in Korea. Large user base and good cash flow of Hangame helped the creation of the various services for Naver. Then the portal site secured the market leader position not long after the merger and has held a market share of over 70% since 2011.As the smartphone ecosystem is becoming an important business platform after the advent of iPhone in 2009, the giant portal came to face the challenges for both Internet portal and game businesses. Many cast doubt on the growth of the company’s Internet advertising as the people’s eyeballs move from PC screens to mobiles. Furthermore, new types of mobile games have emerged such as the games that are integrated with Kakao Talk, a free messenger service for mobile devices. Moreover, the negative social perception on the addiction to games drives the game company to deal with the issues of social responsibilities and restrictions by government regulations. Considering these challenges, the current case study discusses the driving forces for the merger and spinoff of the game company. Through this case study, we hope to provide readers with the opportunity to understand the web game and Internet portal industry and have a prospective on the influence of technology and regulation on business.

TicketMonster is a deal-of-the-day coupon site which utilizes the Internet and mobile infrastructure to offer deals in Seoul and other cities around Korea on services at restaurants, cafes, spas, and so forth. Following the company’s rapid expansion, management made the decision to expand the scope of TicketMonster beyond Korea’s borders with the aim of taking on other Asian markets. To this end, TicketMonster acquired Everyday.com.my, the biggest social shopping site in Malaysia. However, it was believed that simply competing in markets across Asia would not enable TicketMonster to claim sufficient market share in light of the international expansion of Groupon and LivingSocial, two social commerce global giants. Furthermore, competition in the social commerce sector in Korea had escalated as local, regional and international players vied for consumer awareness and loyalty. On top of an advertising war, competition grew to the point where several sites began selling coupons while knowingly taking a loss by lowering commissions in order to attract competitive products or services for their respective deals and at times paying for the services themselves. In mid-2011, U.S.-based LivingSocial made an offer to buy TicketMonster in order to strengthen its presence in Asia. Considering these changes and challenges, what are the strategic issues regarding TicketMonster and how should the company deal with the offer to deploy its transfer of ownership to LivingSocial? This case will help readers form an opinion on the related management issues and analyses.

Achieving effective business design across the Internet and the offline channel is a critical concern for a hybrid firm's choice of pricing strategy. To examine the effects of consumer channel migration - a form of one-way channel interaction from the traditional sales channel to the Internet - on pricing strategy, we propose two types of pricing models. One has no interaction between the Internet and offline channels. The other includes the possibility of one-way migration to the Internet channel, and incorporates consumers' channel switching costs and loyalty to the firm. The two models offer interesting results for understanding traditional and Internet-based selling. A high level of channel migration leads a firm to manage two channels as one. With low channel migration, in contrast, the firm should separately optimize and manage each channel. By comparing the results, we obtained two main findings. First, the level of channel migration determines a hybrid firm's pricing strategy. Second, the hybrid firm's price level choice should be determined by the online demand proportion of its business. We validated these modeling results with the business cases of well-known firms from the United States and empirical analysis for ten large South Korean e-commerce firms, by comparing the prices in different product categories for various types of hybrid firms and Internet-only firms. This research offers new marketing strategy insights for managers of the hybrid firm who wish to optimize price-setting decisions based on interactions between distribution channels and the intensity of the firm's involvement in the online channel.