The informational potential of art e-commerce platforms for art investors

The art market has always been depicted as being very secretive but the growing financialization of the art market over the last five decades has been accompanied by an increasing production and distribution of art market information. This information helped art investors to gain better knowledge over time on art as an investment category. Contrarily to what has previously been claimed by several scholars, this thesis supported the idea that better information enables the art investor to make better decisions. By adopting theories on ‘art price determinants’ and research on the confidence level of online buyers the present research focused on analyzing the information present on art e-commerce platforms selling art online directly to the customer through a ‘click-and-buy’ model. Art e-commerce platforms are regarded as being ‘information marketplaces’ on which art investors can find considerable information. The empirical findings indicate that especially information on materialistic characteristics of artworks and demographic characteristics of artists is widely available on the online platforms and on which buyers interested in the economic value of art can rely on to increase the effectiveness of their decisions.