How do cost structures (fixed & variable + profit margins) of online retailers compare with offline retailing?

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Muhammad Subhan

Dear Roy,

Since most of our today's business practices are now 'moving' from offline to online, your study will be very essential and interesting. Please share with us the result of your study later...

The following papers are about offline versus online, but not really focus on the cost structures:

Online vs. Offline Competition (By Ethan Lieber and Chad Syverson, accessible at: http://www3.nd.edu/~elieber/research/online_offline.pdf)

Pricing Strategies in Online & Offline Retailing (A Thesis By Gottfried Gruber, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, accessible at: http://epub.wu.ac.at/1872/1/document.pdf)

Strategic Online and Offline Retail Pricing (By Dhruv Grewal, Ramkumar Janakiraman, Kirthi Kalyanam, P.K. Kannan, Brian Ratchford, Reo Song, and Stephen Tolerico, accessible at: http://www.dhruvgrewal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2010-JIM-OnlinePricing.pdf)

Dinesh Kumar

One excellent article that details online cost structures rather well is "Strategy and the Internet" by Michael Porter (Harvard Business Review). It was an eye opener. Offline cost structures are easy to calculate from annual reports of retail companies.