How to Increase Online Visits and Sales? An Empirical Study on the Consumer-to-Consumer Online Stores

Abstract

Product visits and sales are of special meanings for online stores. However, little research has compared the influential factors for product visits and sales. Using data of the China C2C online market, this research adopts the Poisson and zero-inflated Poisson model to examine this issue. Bayesian methods are used to estimate the parameters and we find that factors such as store advertising and product's historical sales positively influence both visits and sales. However, price, the number of items offered in store, and store reputation exert differential impacts on visits and sales, and the results on the impact of guarantees and consumer evaluations are mixed. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications in the conclusion part.