Consumer spending accounts for a large fraction of the US economic activity. Increasingly, consumer activity is moving to the web, where digital traces of shopping and purchases provide valuable data about consumer behavior. We analyze these data extracted from emails and combine them with demographic information to characterize, model, and predict consumer behavior. Breaking down purchasing by age and gender, we find that the amount of money spent on online purchases grows sharply with age, peaking in late 30s. Men are more frequent online purchasers and spend more money when compared to women. Linking online shopping to income, we find that shoppers from more affluent areas purchase more expensive items and buy them more frequently, resulting in significantly more money spent on online purchases. We also look at dynamics of purchasing behavior and observe daily and weekly cycles in purchasing behavior, similarly to other online activities. More specifically, we observe temporal patterns in purchasing behavior suggesting shoppers have finite budgets: the more expensive an item, the longer the shopper waits since the last purchase to buy it. We also observe that shoppers who email each other purchase more similar items than socially unconnected shoppers, and this effect is particularly evident among women. Finally, we build a model to predict when shoppers will make a purchase and how much will spend on it. We find that temporal features improve prediction accuracy over competitive baselines. A better understanding of consumer behavior can help improve marketing efforts and make online shopping more pleasant and efficient.
 Women have yet to welcome Web-based shopping as readily as men. A primary factor for this state is how men and women view shopping. Understanding those differences will help vendors address this vital pool of consumers. Purpose – This paper examines the shopping and buying behavior of younger and older online shoppers as mediated by their attitudes toward internet shopping.Design methodology approach – Over 300 students and staff from a US university completed a survey regarding their online shopping and buying experiences for 17 products.Findings – The results show that, while older online shoppers search for significantly fewer products than their younger counterparts, they actually purchase as much as younger consumers. Attitudinal factors explained more variance in online searching behavior. Age explained more variance in purchasing behavior if the consumer had first searched for the product online.Research limitations implications – The limitations of the present research are threefold. First, the sample was restricted to university faculty, staff and students. Second, a better measure of the hedonic motivation construct is needed. Third, additional independent measures such as income should be included to understan... Despite the increasing number of online users and products that are being offered on the Web, there is relatively little work that specifically examines the role of gender and educational level on the attitudes of Internet users in the Singapore context. Our findings reveal that there is a general consensus amongst Singaporeans that the Internet is a convenient medium for information search or making purchases. The better-educated respondents seem to be less concerned with security issues. They also perceive that Internet shopping provides better prices and more cost savings. Females indicate a strong dislike for not being able to savour a physically fulfilling shopping experience online. Despite the spread of e-commerce, few studies have investigated gender-based differences in the adoption of consumer-oriented electronic commerce. Theory and evidence from other domains indicates that such differences may exist. Using innovation diffusion theory as a framework, we empirically investigate whether the impact of beliefs regarding the characteristics of e-commerce and the trustworthiness of Web merchants on intentions to use e-commerce differ according to gender. Results indicate that such differences do exist. Perceived compatibility and visibility have greater impacts for women. In contrast, males' use intentions are more driven by perceived relative advantage and result demonstrability. No differences were found for perceived ease of use and Web merchant trustworthiness.