Information technology: Retail users versus nonusers

Marketing researchers show increasing interest in the impact of information technologies on how firms conduct their business operations. Unfortunately there is a dearth of empirical research that examines the actual influence of information technologies on such fundamental marketing activities as buying and selling. This article reports the results of exploratory research into the impact of information technology on the structure of buyer-seller relationships. Research hypotheses were tested with survey data from the retail jewelry industry. The data suggest that for some dimensions of the relationship, buyers who are high-volume information technologies users evidence quite different attitudes than do nonusers or low-volume users of a type of information technology.