Gender effect on e-commerce sales of experience gifts

Preliminary empirical findings

Joni Salminen, Qatar Computing Research Institute,

HBKU; and Turku School of Economics

Sarem Seitz, Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg

Bernard J. Jansen, Qatar Computing Research

Institute, HBKU

Tommi Salenius, Parcero

The 17th International Conference on Electronic Business, Dubai, December 4-8.

Purpose

Despite new targeting criteria (intent, interests), demographic criteria are still widely applied in the industry. Often, this makes sense becausethe product naturally matches with specificgenders or ages. In this work, we explore howgender influences online purchase behavior of consumers buying experience gifts.

Purpose

RQ1: How do e-commerce purchases of experience gifts split between men and women?

RQ2: Do the products bought differ by gender? If so, how?

RQ3: Is there a difference in the use of discount codes between the genders?

Data

• We collected 493 e-commerce purchases from 2017

• Variables:

• Product purchased

• Price

• Final price (if equal to Price, discount code use = 0)

• Product category

• Gender

• Labelled gender and product category manually

• E-commerce store sells experience gift cards (e.g., tandem jump, rally driving, dinner in the dark).

Analysis

We used statistical testing to comparedifferences between men and women.

These included ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, and log-linear models, according to the nature of the data. All tests were performed with p-values below 0.05 being statistically significant.

Data

Female account for 65% and male 35% of purchases

Findings: price

Men tend to buy slightly more expensive experience gifts, but the difference is not statistically significant.

Findings: product categories

Frequency of purchases by category and gender. Statistical analysis did not find significant differences.

Findings: use of discount codes

Estimate Std. error Z value Pr(>|z|)

(Intercept) 4.61616 0.05415 85.255 < 2e-16 ***

Gender 0.26226 0.05415 4.844 1.28e-06 ***

Discount -0.55040 0.05415 -10.165 < 2e-16 ***

Gender:Discount -0.10851 0.05415 -2.004 0.0451 *

Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

A regression model shows that a male customer is, on average, around 1.38 times more likely to use a discount coupon than a female customer.

Conclusions

• Based on the findings, it seems that the online purchase behavior of experience gifts between males and females is not drastically different regarding type of and price of experience gifts they purchase.

• Rather than gender, interests are more likely to drive purchase behavior.

• The exception is customers’ use of discount codes, in which we found that men are significantly more likely to use discount codes (about 1.38 times more than women on average).

• This suggests men are more discount-sensitive than women.

Recommendations for e-commece managers

1. Focus on targeting criteria that most effectivelydrives behavior (e.g., intent- or interest-basedtargeting)

2. Examine how gender differences show in purchase behavior, especially in the use of discount coupons

3. Adjust messaging and targeting accordingly.

Thank you!