Predicting Online Purchasing Behavior

W.r Buckinx and Dirk Van den Poel

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: This empirical study investigates the contribution of different types of predictors to the purchasing behaviour at an online store. We use logit modelling to predict whether or not a purchase is made during the next visit to the website using both forward and backward variable-selection techniques, as well as Furnival and Wilson’s global score search algorithm to find the best subset of predictors. We contribute to the literature by using variables from four different categories in predicting online-purchasing behaviour: (1) general clickstream behaviour at the level of the visit, (2) more detailed clickstream information, (3) customer demographics, and (4) historical purchase behaviour. The results show that predictors from all four categories are retained in the final (best subset) solution indicating that clickstream behaviour is important when determining the tendency to buy. We clearly indicate the contribution in predictive power of variables that were never used before in online purchasing studies. Detailed clickstream variables are the most important ones in classifying customers according to their online purchase behaviour. In doing so, we are able to highlight the advantage of e-commerce retailers of being able to capture an elaborate list of customer information.

Keywords: Marketing; Forecasting; E-commerce; Classification; Clickstream data; Customer Relationship Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2003-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_03_195.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Predicting online-purchasing behaviour (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:03/195

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