Modeling consumer visit frequency on the Internet

This study explores whether a NBD type of model can be applied to characterize the underlying frequency distribution of online consumer's visit behavior. In this study, the following two research questions are addressed: (1) How can we characterize the underlying distribution pattern(s) of the number of repeat visits to a site; (2) How can consumer's Internet usages and his/her demographics affect the average number of visits to the site? Through the empirical investigation, this study found that NBD models are directly applicable to characterize the underlying distribution of visit frequency on the Internet. Furthermore, this study addresses some managerial implications for understanding how site are determined. Especially this study highlights the relationship between repeated visits and the visitors' Internet usages and demographics. The proposed models are estimated and validated by online panel data that covers more than 1000 different sites and has 800000 observations.