Examining the Factors that Impact the Likelihood of an Online Sale

Ron Lyles Jr
ECON 495
Fall 2018

Overview:

  • Log of web traffic to Google's Merchandise store
  • September 2016 - January 2017
  • 903,653 observations
  • 'channelGrouping', 'date', 'fullVisitorId', 'sessionId', 'socialEngagementType', 'visitId', 'visitNumber', 'visitStartTime', 'browser', 'browserSize', 'browserVersion', 'deviceCategory', 'flashVersion', 'isMobile', 'language', 'mobileDeviceBranding', 'mobileDeviceInfo', 'mobileDeviceMarketingName', 'mobileDeviceModel', 'mobileInputSelector', 'operatingSystem', 'operatingSystemVersion', 'screenColors', 'screenResolution', 'city', 'cityId', 'continent', 'country', 'latitude', 'longitude', 'metro', 'networkDomain', 'networkLocation', 'region', 'subContinent', 'bounces', 'hits', 'newVisits', 'pageviews', 'transactionRevenue', 'visits', 'adContent', 'adwordsClickInfo', 'campaign', 'campaignCode', 'isTrueDirect', 'keyword', 'medium', 'referralPath', 'source', 'madePurchase'
  • Goal: Find impact of different factors on likelihood of making a purchase

https://shop.googlemerchandisestore.com/

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Prior Work

Model

  • Logit model
    • Binary explanatory variables
  • Dependent variable: 1 if purchase was made during visit, 0 otherwise
  • Three categories of factors:
    • Location
    • Marketing
    • User
  • Marginal effects will be reported

Methodology:

Descriptive Statistics - Location

SubContinent,Australasia, Caribbean, Central_America, Eastern_Asia, Eastern_Europe, Northern_America, Northern_Europe, South_America, Southeast_Asia, Southern_Asia, Western_Asia, Western_Europe, other Total Visits,14893, 2406, 15583, 46919, 45249, 390657, 58168, 41731, 77800, 59321, 38443, 59114, 53369 Purchases, 14, 16, 26, 59, 14, 11143, 27, 98, 32, 11, 21, 30, 24
SubContinent,Australasia, Caribbean, Central_America, Eastern_Asia, Eastern_Europe, Northern_America, Northern_Europe, South_America, Southeast_Asia, Southern_Asia, Western_Asia, Western_Europe, other Total Visits,1.6481, 0.2663, 1.7244, 5.1921, 5.0073, 43.2309, 6.437, 4.618, 8.6095, 6.5646, 4.2542, 6.5417, 5.9059 Purchases, 0.1216, 0.1389, 0.2258, 0.5124, 0.1216, 96.7694, 0.2345, 0.8511, 0.2779, 0.0955, 0.1824, 0.2605, 0.2084

Descriptive Statistics - Marketing

  • Source - Specific origin of web traffic eg 'google' or 'domain.com'

Descriptive Statistics - Source

Source, direct, bing, dealspotrcom, dfa, facebookcom, gdealsgoogleplexcom, google, groupsgooglecom, lfacebookcom, mailgooglecom, mallgoogleplexcom, sitesgooglecom, yahoo, youtubecom, other Total Visits, 143028, 1530, 528, 5686, 2296, 1063, 400788, 1025, 795, 1457, 66416, 2983, 1480, 212602, 61976 Purchases, 2042, 21, 40, 123, 20, 18, 3879, 38, 13, 62, 5103, 42, 22, 11, 81
Source, direct, bing, dealspotrcom, dfa, facebookcom, gdealsgoogleplexcom, google, groupsgooglecom, lfacebookcom, mailgooglecom, mallgoogleplexcom, sitesgooglecom, yahoo, youtubecom, other Total Visits, 15.8278, 0.1693, 0.0584, 0.6292, 0.2541, 0.1176, 44.352, 0.1134, 0.088, 0.1612, 7.3497, 0.3301, 0.1638, 23.527, 6.8584 Purchases, 17.7334, 0.1824, 0.3474, 1.0682, 0.1737, 0.1563, 33.6865, 0.33, 0.1129, 0.5384, 44.3161, 0.3647, 0.1911, 0.0955, 0.7034

Descriptive Statistics - User

  • Operating System
  • Browser

Descriptive Statistics - Operating System

Operating System, Android, Chrome_OS, Linux, Macintosh, Windows, iOS, other Total Visits, 123892, 26337, 35034, 253938, 350072, 107665, 6715 Purchases, 467, 994, 782, 6426, 2309, 536, 1
Operating System, Android, Chrome_OS, Linux, Macintosh, Windows, iOS, other Total Visits, 13.7101, 2.9145, 3.8769, 28.1013, 38.7396, 11.9144, 0.7431 Purchases, 4.0556, 8.6322, 6.7911, 55.8055, 20.0521, 4.6548, 0.0087

Descriptive Statistics - Browser

Browser, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet_Explorer, Safari, Safari_inapp, other Total Visits,620364, 10205, 37069, 19375, 182245, 6850, 27545 Purchases, 10353, 58, 191, 109, 780, 12, 12
Browser, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet_Explorer, Safari, Safari_inapp, other Total Visits, 68.6507, 1.1293, 4.1021, 2.1441, 20.1676, 0.758, 3.0482 Purchases, 89.9088, 0.5037, 1.6587, 0.9466, 6.7738, 0.1042, 0.1042

Marginal Effects

(Standard errors in parentheses)

Location

Australasia0.000 (0.001)
Caribbean0.016*** (0.005)
Central_America0.004*** (0.002)
Eastern_Asia0.002** (0.001)
Eastern_Europe0.000 (0.000)
Northern_America0.007*** (0.001)
Northern_Europe0.000* (0.000)
South_America0.006*** (0.002)
Southeast_Asia0.001 (0.000)
Southern_Asia-0.001*** (0.000)
Western_Asia0.001* (0.001)
Western_Europe0.000 (0.000)

Source

direct0.005*** (0.001)
bing0.007*** (0.002)
dealspotrcom0.026*** (0.005)
dfa0.006*** (0.001)
facebookcom0.005*** (0.002)
gdealsgoogleplexcom0.003*** (0.001)
google0.003*** (0.000)
groupsgooglecom0.010*** (0.002)
lfacebookcom0.006*** (0.002)
mailgooglecom0.015*** (0.003)
mallgoogleplexcom0.016*** (0.002)
sitesgooglecom0.003*** (0.001)
yahoo0.008*** (0.002)
youtubecom-0.002*** (0.000)

Operating System

Android0.002 (0.003)
Chrome_OS0.010 (0.011)
Linux0.005 (0.006)
Macintosh0.006 (0.005)
Windows0.004 (0.003)
iOS0.002 (0.003)

Browser

Chrome0.001*** (0.000)
Edge0.001* (0.001)
Firefox0.001* (0.001)
Internet_Explorer0.001* (0.001)
Safari0.001* (0.001)
Safari_inapp0.000 (0.001)

Overall

Constant-0.014***
Pseudo R-Squared: 0.2079
Log-Likelihood: -48858.010
LL-Null: -61679
LLR p-value: 0.000

Conclusions

  • Caribbean visitors in the sample were most likely to make a purchase
    • Otherwise, location results marginally significant
  • People who visited from Google campus more likely to purchase
  • Visitors from youtube less likely to make a purchase; visitors from dealspotr.com most likely
  • People in Google's ecosystem (Chrome OS, Chrome browser) more likely to purchase