The Myth of the Level Playing Field in E-Commerce

[mandy]

The argument that e-commerce allows price and product quality to trump large marketing budgets has been crushed by, well, large marketing budgets.

... the Web's populist response is to rely on price-comparison sites that—in theory—put all vendors on an equal footing so that price is the only differentiator.

If that were true, the smaller retailers would have a fair fight. Much lower overhead sometimes allows them to charge less than the big boys could.

Recently, though, identity theft and related security concerns have entered the equation, returning the odds to strongly favor the major players.

Rightly or wrongly, consumers tend to trust larger sites more for three reasons....

full article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1882538,00.asp

[regic]

Who believed things were level?