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Publications
  • 2018
  • Working Paper

Need for Speed: The Impact of Website Performance on Online Retail

By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:35
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Abstract

The share of e-commerce sales is rapidly increasing and so are the associated losses generated by website outages and slow websites. We leverage novel retail and website performance data to investigate the impact of website performance on online sales. This question is especially relevant in the current regulatory environment, given the ongoing policy debates around net-neutrality. Using two different research designs—panel data with fixed effects and generalized synthetic control with elastic net—we estimate sizable adverse effects of website speed slowdowns on online sales, especially in the mobile channel. Our results show that decreases in website performance make customers less likely to place an order and undermine retailers' quest to turn website traffic into sales. The findings have important implications for the net neutrality debate and retailers' website design decisions, specifically the selection of third-party content providers and the customized design of mobile and desktop channels.

Keywords

Online Retail; Quasi-experiments; Abandonment; Synthetic Control; Internet and the Web; Performance; Service Operations

Citation

Gallino, Santiago, Nil Karacaoglu, and Antonio Moreno. "Need for Speed: The Impact of Website Performance on Online Retail." Working Paper, October 2018.
  • SSRN

About The Author

Antonio Moreno

Technology and Operations Management
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces

    By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
    • June 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion

    By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Emilie Billaud and Federica Gabrieli
    • June 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Worten Portugal: Becoming a Digital Marketplace

    By: Antonio Moreno, Pedro Amorim and Tonia Labruyere
More from the Authors
  • Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
  • Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Emilie Billaud and Federica Gabrieli
  • Worten Portugal: Becoming a Digital Marketplace By: Antonio Moreno, Pedro Amorim and Tonia Labruyere
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