Shopping Cost and Brand Exploration in Online Grocery
对比消费者在线上与线下杂货店购物时的品牌探索行为，发现线下探索更多，并量化了电子商务特征（如收藏夹列表、质量验证困难）的作用，指出线上探索有限导致互联网渠道进入壁垒更高。
This paper compares consumers' brand exploration when shopping online versus in a brick-and-mortar store. I use a new scanner dataset to compare the behavior of households shopping online and in-store at the same chain, for identical items and prices. I find that brand exploration is more prevalent in-store. My model quantifies the role of features of e-commerce, like the existence of “favorites lists” and the difficulty in verifying item quality. Limited exploration online implies higher barriers to entry on the Internet channel. Counterfactual exercises suggest that online advertising could make the Internet channel more competitive.