Competitive prices are one way to keep a site sticky, but there are no guarantees.
The Web makes it pretty easy to find a better price, and perpetually undercutting prices makes it tough for a company to make any money. Brand recognition helps breed online loyalty, but it, too, may not be enough. Many online vendors are working to build a community of buyers through collaborative features such as message boards, automated notification, product recommendations and real-time text and voice chat. Such tools can help provide real-time and asynchronous support to customers as they search for products and after they have purchased products. After all, hosting the systems necessary to manage synchronous and asynchronous collaboration is more complex and expensive than simply running a Web site with static and dynamic catalog content.