The World Wide Web (www) has been adopted as a new medium for disseminating corporate information. It is a medium that offers numerous benefits for distributing business information to stakeholders over traditional means like the printed annual reports. The present paper analyzes the perceived usefulness of corporate disclosure through the Web by surveying retail investors taken from the selected cities of Punjab and Chandigarh (union territory). The data is collected from the selected respondents by personally administering the pretested questionnaire. Factor analysis has been applied to identify the structure of the Web-based factors, which have the potential to enhance the usefulness of corporate information. Improvement in quality of information, better decision making, increased usefulness of information, better evaluation, and enhanced competition have been identified as the factors explaining the perceived usefulness of corporate disclosure through the Web.

Corporate disclosure is irrefutable in a free enterprise economy. It assists individual investors in selecting the best portfolio for their investments (Lal, 1985). The process of disclosure, however, is possible through a mix of formal and informal channels including printed annual reports, prospectus, financial press releases, interim reports, annual general meetings, and conference calls. Within this portfolio of channels, the printed annual reports are considered to be among the most important source of information in practice (Chang et al., 1983; Arnold et al., 1984; and Pike et al., 1993). Though these paper-based annual reports have the characteristics of being movable, standardized, authentic and comparable, these are believed to be limited in their scope and capability for extending information beyond that required by the statutory obligator. Many researchers are of the view that these paper-based annual reports will gradually disappear due to shift towards the disclosure of a much greater volume of timely and inexpensive information, especially forward-looking, non-financial and qualitative information (Bury, 1999; Lymer et al., 1999; Nordberg, 1999; and Beattie and Pratt, 2001). The growth in the use of information technology, especially the Internet and its offspring, the World Wide Web (www), has provided a new medium for dissemination of corporate information to stakeholder. It is a platform that exhibits distinctive and attractive features that make it an effective option when compared with traditional platform of distributing corporate information (Petravick and Gillet, 1996). Many companies are using this platform to present the financial data, especially annual reports, database on press releases and other company specific information. Studies conducted by various researchers (Lymer, 1997; Deller et al., 1998; Marston and Leow, 1998; and Pirchegger et al., 1999) have proved the increased use of Internet for disseminating corporate information to stakeholders. The Internet provides numerous benefits for communicating corporate information to stakeholders over conventional print media such as visual/graphic presentation of information, two-way interaction, increased information accessibility, low-cost solution, plenty of space to add financial pages, ability to constantly update the information, ease of information analysis, ease of search, global reach and flexibility of information (Hassen et al., 2000; Beattie and Pratt, 2001; and Singh and Malhotra, 2004). These benefits assist in enhancing corporate accountability to them by providing a new dimension to reporting (Lodhia et al., 2003).

Notwithstanding the features and advantages offered by the Internet, there are issues and problems associated with this new platform. These problems include digital divide, information overload, security risks and lack of content and presentation standards (Debreceny and Gray, 1996; Koreto, 1997; Westarp et al., 1998; Ashbaugh et al., 1999; and Lymer et al., 1999).

Accounting Research and Audit Practices Journal, World Wide Web, WWW, Corporate Disclosure, Decision Making, Italian Association of Financial Analysts, IAFA, Latent Root Criteria, LRC, Institute of Investment Management and Research, IIMR, Web Disclosure, Technological Change, Financial Reporting.