The extant service innovation literature suggests the high cost of an information search, when evaluating a new service provider, creates switching costs that hold customers hostage, allowing first-movers to recoup their investments and sustain an advantage. We utilize Transaction Cost Economics as a theoretical foundation to expand the service innovation literature by examining the Internet’s impact on the cost of information. We propose that as a result of the Internet, experience services offered by service firms have largely become search services, with lower levels of information asymmetry. We also suggest that the Internet has had little impact on information costs related to firms that offer largely credence services. These services will continue to exhibit higher levels of information asymmetry. Finally, we present a moderated model of innovation vs. imitation strategies that suggests that firms offering search services will increase firm performance through imitation, while credence firms will increase firm performance through innovation strategies.
The extant service innovation literature suggests the high cost of an information search, when evaluating a new service provider, creates switching costs that hold customers hostage, allowing first-movers to recoup their investments and sustain an advantage. We utilize Transaction Cost Economics as a theoretical foundation to expand the service innovation literature by examining the Internet’s impact on the cost of information. We propose that as a result of the Internet, experience services offered by service firms have largely become search services, with lower levels of information asymmetry. We also suggest that the Internet has had little impact on information costs related to firms that offer largely credence services. These services will continue to exhibit higher levels of information asymmetry. Finally, we present a moderated model of innovation vs. imitation strategies that suggests that firms offering search services will increase firm performance through imitation, while credence firms will increase firm performance through innovation strategies.
This paper investigates the substitutability between money and near-money assets during the period 1976 to 1996 in Switzerland. Financial developments have made a variety of instruments available to store wealth and conduct economic transactions. These developments have generated a "near money" component in households' and businesses' portfolio balances. It is important to evaluate the effect of "near-money" on money demand and the effectiveness of monetary policy. Towards this goal, five monetary assets: currency and demand deposits at commercial banks, demand deposits with the postal system, depOSits on transaction accounts with banks, savings depOSits and time deposits are considered. We evaluate the degree of substitutability among these assets using the Morishima elasiticity. Results show that various monetary assets substitute for one another. Consistent with a high degree of diversification, the Morishima elasticity is significantly larger when adjustment takes place in the price of a relatively broader monetary asset as compared with a narrower one. Targeting a broad monetary aggregate captures a variety of assets that contribute to liquidity and aggregate demand, enhancing the effectiveness of monetary policy. Nonetheless, high elasticity of substitution between monetary assets has made it increasingly difficult to target money demand via changes in the interest rate. As a result, in 1999 the Swiss National Bank abandoned monetary targeting in favor of an expected inflation target. b • corresponding author. The authors would like to thank George Rich, Robert Fluri and Christof Stahel at the Swiss National Bank for providing the data efficiently. The authors would also like to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments. The views in the paper ;. are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as those of the International Monetary Fund, or of the World Bank. f I:" ..
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.