A Research on Marketing Channel: its development, management, and restructuring

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In this project, I conduct two studies to investigate the impact of e-commerce on social welfare using two oligopoly models. One is a study in which I construct a new model of horizontal differentiation to examine the impact of a new web channel of physical products, while the other is a study in which I construct a new model of vertical differentiation to examine the impact of a new web channel of information products. I find that the appearance of e-commerce enhances retail competition and always increases consumer surplus in the both studies. However, I also find that social surplus does not necessarily improve in the former, while the social surplus always improves in the latter.