Expansion of the Scope of Electronic Commerce by Standardization: An Analysis a Secondhand Clothing Market

Iljoo Kim

Abstract


Since the first sale of a banner advertisement in 1995, electronic commerce has become a new transaction channel for consumers. With more than 20 years of its history, electronic commerce has become an important consumption channel for everyone and inexperience is no more a reason that discourages the consumption through this channel. The great expansion of this channel is now a formidable thereat to traditional channels. However, products with high asset specificity and complexity are still having difficulty to be traded over the online channel where the experience of the products for a consumer is limited. Especially, variations of the same product’s quality depending on how pre-owners used the product and high complexity to describe the quality of the products prevent used goods from being traded over e-channels. Added to that, the information asymmetry between sellers and buyers for used goods makes the establishment of market transaction difficult. Considering the challenges, the current case study discusses thredUP, a clothing resale platform company. In this paper, we study how the company could overcome those limitations in this toughest resale market through the use of AI for dynamic pricing and standarized product quality ratings. In addition, we also hope to provide readers with the opportunity to understand the secondhand industries and its market, and see where it is heading for in the future. 

 

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References


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