Abstract
Subscription programs have been widely adopted by e-commerce platforms to improve customer loyalty, but their impacts on consumer behaviors remain under-explored. We collaborate with a large online retailer using a difference-in-differences design with the causal forest method to identify the causal effects of member subscriptions on customer search and purchase behaviors on the platform. We find that subscribers, compared to those non-subscribers, conduct more product searches, spend more time browsing product pages, and purchase more products. However, only 20% of the effect on customer net purchases is due to planned buying, and the remaining 80% origins from impulse purchases. We also find that the treatment effects on search and order behaviors are heterogeneous across customers. Female customers and those customers who renew their subscriptions after expiring are more likely to conduct impulsive purchases.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | PACIS 2023 Proceedings |
| Publisher | Association for Information Systems |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2023 |
| Event | 2023 Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2023): Navigating Digital Turbulence and Seizing New Possibilities - Shangri-La Hotel & Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, China Duration: 8 Jul 2023 → 12 Jul 2023 https://pacis2023.aisconferences.org/ https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2023/index.3.html |
Conference
| Conference | 2023 Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2023) |
|---|---|
| Place | China |
| City | Nanchang |
| Period | 8/07/23 → 12/07/23 |
| Internet address |
Research Keywords
- Subscription programs have been widely adopted by e-commerce platforms to improve customer loyalty, but their impacts on consumer behaviors remain under-explored. We collaborate with a large online retailer using a difference-in-differences design with the causal forest method to identify the causal effects of member subscriptions on customer search and purchase behaviors on the platform. We find that subscribers, compared to those non-subscribers, conduct more product searches, spend more time browsing product pages, and purchase more products. However, only 20% of the effect on customer net purchases is due to planned buying, and the remaining 80% origins from impulse purchases. We also find that the treatment effects on search and order behaviors are heterogeneous across customers. Female customers and those customers who renew their subscriptions after expiring are more likely to conduct impulsive purchases.
- mobile commerce
- search behavior
- impulsive purchase