NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Searching for Physical and Digital Media: The Evolution of Platforms for Finding Books

Michael R. Baye, Babur De los Santos, Matthijs R. Wildenbeest

NBER Working Paper No. 19519
Issued in October 2013
NBER Program(s):   IO   PR

This paper provides a data-driven overview of the different online platforms that consumers use to search for books and booksellers, and documents how the use of these platforms is shifting over time. Our data suggest that, as a result of digitization, consumers are increasingly conducting searches for books at retailer sites and closed systems (e.g., the Kindle and Nook) rather than at general search engines (e.g., Google or Bing). We also highlight a number of challenges that will make it difficult for researchers to accurately measure internet-based search behavior in the years to come. Finally, we highlight a number of open agenda items related to the pricing of books and other digital media, as well as consumer search behavior.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Information about Free Papers

You should expect a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, an employee of the U.S. federal government with a ".GOV" domain name, or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy.

If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access.

E-mail:

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w19519

Published: Searching for Physical and Digital Media: The Evolution of Platforms for Finding Books, Michael R. Baye, Babur De los Santos, Matthijs R. Wildenbeest. in Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy, Goldfarb, Greenstein, and Tucker. 2015

Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded these:
Bernheim and Garrett w5667 The Determinants and Consequences of Financial Education in the Workplace: Evidence from a Survey of Households
Baye, De los Santos, and Wildenbeest Searching for Physical and Digital Media: The Evolution of Platforms for Finding Books
Clemens and Williamson w9181 Why Did the Tariff-Growth Correlation Reverse After 1950?
Danaher, Dhanasobhon, Smith, and Telang w19634 Understanding Media Markets in the Digital Age: Economics and Methodology
Blattberg and Broderick Marketing of Art Museums
 
Publications
Activities
Meetings
NBER Videos
Data
People
About

Support
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org

Contact Us
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19519
www.nber.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-35
29968
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:H22EPVH34UDJZNVRTFVLEPSKMVLSLKWU
<urn:uuid:3bcf5544-2449-45f6-925f-9a86da566581>
2015-08-29T07:20:53Z
199.233.228.243
sha1:7SLK7ZULEGTID3SWLXLLT5ULIHIKZ7KI
<urn:uuid:1393161b-cfed-4acc-9480-389c076f3803>
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19519
length
response
<urn:uuid:ccb85775-86f1-489f-9b23-fbc7dc4e891d>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-35
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf