The Internet Killed Distance. Mobile Phones Brought It Back

摘要

For retailing, the key change produced by the Internet is that shopping online j spared consumers the economic costs (in time, grief, and gas money) of visiting a store and locating a product. This has been called the "death of distance." When even isolated individuals can buy anything from a global marketplace, physical location does not confer any commercial i advantage, and online merchants might be expected to win every battle. But an emerging body of economic research shows that there is no independent "online world." Physical context matters to e-commerce. It shapes our choices and tastes, and it strongly determines what we buy online. With the rise of mobile computing, these local effects matter even more.