Empirical Analysis on Price Level changes and Price Adjustment Policy Selection: Evidence from B2C E-commerce Market

Abstract

The price war is the main market competition way for Chinese e-commerce retailers. Based on the price data from JD, Amazon and Dangdang, the paper conducted an empirical research on the price competition in B2C e-commerce market in China in terms of the average price level, minimum price level, price differential level and price variation. The research results show that the average price levels between the three e-commerce websites have significant differences. The minimum price level and the price differential level, however, tend to be similar. For the price variation, the three websites adopt different price adjustment strategies and do their best to avoid the direct price war, which reveals that the e-commerce market competition in China is gradually becoming rational.