Start Date

12-16-2013

Description

The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has been fueling the growth of mobile commerce around the world. This paper quantifies the economic impact of tablets in ecommerce markets by examining its complementary and substitution effects with PCs and smartphones. We use an archival data from the largest ecommerce website in China and exploit a quasi-natural experiment to identify our results. Results show that the introduction of tablets enhanced the overall growth of ecommerce markets, with an annual impact of approximately US$3.04 billion. The tablet channel acts as a substitute for the PC and a complement for the smartphone. Further, consumers spend more when a tablet is simultaneously used with a PC, a smartphone, or both. The most revenue generating combination of simultaneous device usage is that of a smartphone and a tablet. We provide insights for retailers about how to increase their sales revenue in the emerging tablet economy.

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Dec 16th, 12:00 AM

Mobile Commerce in the New Tablet Economy

The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has been fueling the growth of mobile commerce around the world. This paper quantifies the economic impact of tablets in ecommerce markets by examining its complementary and substitution effects with PCs and smartphones. We use an archival data from the largest ecommerce website in China and exploit a quasi-natural experiment to identify our results. Results show that the introduction of tablets enhanced the overall growth of ecommerce markets, with an annual impact of approximately US$3.04 billion. The tablet channel acts as a substitute for the PC and a complement for the smartphone. Further, consumers spend more when a tablet is simultaneously used with a PC, a smartphone, or both. The most revenue generating combination of simultaneous device usage is that of a smartphone and a tablet. We provide insights for retailers about how to increase their sales revenue in the emerging tablet economy.