"Reduction of information asymmetry in e-commerce: the web scraping approach"

Spis treści

Introductory word 7

1.1. Uncertainty and information asymmetry in the digital economy 11

Chapter 1. E-commerce in the face of information asymmetry 11

1.2. Challenges of the e-commerce sector 18

1.3. Advertisement portal as an e-commerce tool 24

2.1. The need to implement automated data acquisition tools 27

2.1.1. Data and information as a basis of the notion of web scraping 27

Chapter 2. Web scraping 27

2.1.2. Web scraping as a medium for obtaining information in a big data world 30

2.2. Properties of data acquisition tools 36

2.3. Use of web scraping in practice 40

2.3.1. Strengths and opportunities of data content mining 40

2.3.2. Legality and ethical use of web scraping 41

3.1. OTOMOTO – the largest Polish automotive classifieds portal 48

Chapter 3. Designing a web scraping tool 48

3.1.1. Structure of the portal 49

3.1.2. A quick look at the OTOMOTO regulations 52

3.2. Preparation for a web scraping tool project 54

3.2.1. Conceptual work. Description of the algorithm’s operation. Process diagram 54

3.2.2. Preparation of the technical environment 61

3.3. Web extractor – design and programmatic implementation 64

3.3.1. Structure of the project in the PyCharm environment 65

3.3.2. Program communication with the user – collecting information 66

3.3.3. Creation of the list of offers’ URL 79

3.3.4. Retrieving hyperlinks to particular advertisements 82

3.3.5. The process of the factual web scraping 85

3.3.6. Exporting scraped results to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet 93

3.3.7. Program operation in practice with a sample analysis 95

3.4. Discussion 101

Conclusions 105

Appendix 107

References 111

List of Figures 127

List of Tables 129