<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Previous survey research revealed that consumers perceived online shopping and buying to be a time saving practice. Paradoxically, they only rarely reported using that tactic to save time, introducing a contradiction. Focus group research and unstructured interviews among active, time-pressured consumers provide partial solutions to the puzzle. Two types of online shopping benefits appeal to two types of consumers: Those experiencing situational time pressure respond well to "time-saving" appeals. Another, larger proportion, whose personal inclinations or personality traits result in time pressure are more interested in doing more tasks quickly or engaging in polychronic activities. These findings suggest online merchants simultaneously promote both time-saving and quicker accomplishment of more tasks. Though they are two sides of the same coin, time-pressured consumers tend to see only one side or the other. Both types of time-pressured shoppers eschew Websites requiring substantial "up-front" investment of time; complex, multi-option initial or home pages, and early insistence for "registration" that requires revealing personal information. This suggests clean, clear, uncluttered introductory pages and delay in urging registration until rapport has been established. Inexpensive, rapid delivery times and liberal return privileges were also highly valued by all time-pressured participants. Cost restrictions limit the degree to which online merchants can accommodate these preferences.</span></span></span></p>
In this article, we develop a model to predict the lifetime duration of customers for a subscription-based online content provider. In contrast to prior research, this article employs a dynamic measure of usage and compares alternate model specifications. A proportional hazard model is used with time-varying usage covariates obtained from Web logs while controlling for initial purchase characteristics such as purchase price and billing frequency. We test and find evidence for violation of the proportionality assumption in the hazard model and conclude that a stratified hazard model provides the best model fit. The results show that customers who are billed monthly for annual subscriptions maintain their subscriptions longer than do customers billed quarterly, when compared to annual subscriptions. Furthermore, dynamic changes in usage have an asymmetric effect on duration, with increases in usage having a stronger effect than do decreases in usage. Managers can use this model to identify the customers to be targeted for both retention and upgrade.
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