A System Dynamics Approach to Assessing Regional Disparity from Competitions of Online Shopping Malls

지역과 수도권 쇼핑몰 간 경쟁분석을 통한 지역격차 연구

The advent of Electronic Commerce is raising two hypothetical questions conflicting each other in economic point of view. The one is that cyberspace will eventually resolve the problem of economic disparity by presenting equal opportunities to local companies through the removal of barriers in terms of time and space. The other is that the problem of economic disparity will be amplified by the vicious cycle of reproduction on an enlarged scale residing in the new rules of digital economy. As an initial attempt to tackle the questions listed above, by introducing systems thinking and adopting the systems dynamics simulation technique this paper puts an effort to find some tentative answers to the questions possibly raised about the impact of electronic commerce on local economy on which little research has been conducted so far. The general scheme for the dynamism of systems where two groups of electronic malls compete each other and the findings presented in the paper would perhaps provide some ideas and directions for further study.