We also found that consumers generally did not pay sales taxes in e-market purchases like they would for traditional market purchases. This supports our hypothesis that sales taxes are relevant to differentiating between the market types. Finally, we found that there are market cost differences between e-markets and traditional markets. This is mainly due to Internet access fees. No one reported a variable e-market transaction charge.
Traditional markets have no comparable fees.
The data support this model by showing that consumers differentiate between sales channels and sellers based on the components of the model. Our findings are summarized in Figure 1. The data also support the theory that the impact of e-markets varies by industry. From Figure 1 we see that, while e-markets reduce some consumer costs, they also increase other costs. The choice of traditional or e-markets then depends on the relative magnitude of the individual costs.