CITE: "Salminen, J., Seitz, S., Jansen, B. J., & Salenius, T. (2017). Gender Effect on E-Commerce Sales of Experience Gifts: Preliminary Empirical Findings. In Proceedings of International Conference on Electronic Business (ICEB 2017). Dubai, 4–8 December." We analyze purchase data from 493 customers of an e-commerce store selling experience gifts to find how gender correlates with average purchase value, category of purchased products, and the use of discount codes. We find no significant differences for average purchase value or category of purchased products, but according to the data, women are more likely to use discount codes than are males. Ideas for further research concerning the gender effect on online shopping behavior are discussed. Link to full paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321586760_Gender_effect_on_e-commerce_sales_of_experience_gifts_Preliminary_empirical_findings Keywords: e-commerce; online consumer behavior; online purchase behavior; online shopping behavior; gender

1. Gender effect on e-commerce sales of
experience gifts
Preliminary empirical findings
Joni Salminen, Qatar Computing Research Institute,
HBKU; and Turku School of Economics
Sarem Seitz, Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg
Bernard J. Jansen, Qatar Computing Research
Institute, HBKU
Tommi Salenius, Parcero
The 17th International Conference on Electronic
Business, Dubai, December 4-8.

2. Purpose
Despite new targeting criteria (intent, interests),
demographic criteria are still widely applied in
the industry. Often, this makes sense because
the product naturally matches with specific
genders or ages. In this work, we explore how
gender influences online purchase behavior of
consumers buying experience gifts.

3. Purpose
RQ1: How do e-commerce purchases of
experience gifts split between men and women?
RQ2: Do the products bought differ by
gender? If so, how?
RQ3: Is there a difference in the use of
discount codes between the genders?

4. Data
• We collected 493 e-commerce purchases from 2017
• Variables:
• Product purchased
• Price
• Final price (if equal to Price, discount code use = 0)
• Product category
• Gender
• Labelled gender and product category manually
• E-commerce store sells experience gift cards (e.g.,
tandem jump, rally driving, dinner in the dark).

5. Analysis
We used statistical testing to compare
differences between men and women.
These included ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, and
log-linear models, according to the nature of
the data. All tests were performed with p-values
below 0.05 being statistically significant.

6. Data
Female account for 65% and male 35% of purchases

7. Findings: price
Men tend to buy slightly more expensive experience gifts,
but the difference is not statistically significant.

8. Findings: product categories
Frequency of purchases by category and gender. Statistical
analysis did not find significant differences.

9. Findings: use of discount codes
Estimate Std. error Z value Pr(>|z|)
(Intercept) 4.61616 0.05415 85.255 < 2e-16 ***
Gender 0.26226 0.05415 4.844 1.28e-06 ***
Discount -0.55040 0.05415 -10.165 < 2e-16 ***
Gender:Discount -0.10851 0.05415 -2.004 0.0451 *
Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
A regression model shows that a male customer is, on
average, around 1.38 times more likely to use a discount
coupon than a female customer.

10. Conclusions
• Based on the findings, it seems that the online purchase
behavior of experience gifts between males and females is
not drastically different regarding type of and price of
experience gifts they purchase.
• Rather than gender, interests are more likely to drive
purchase behavior.
• The exception is customers’ use of discount codes, in
which we found that men are significantly more likely to
use discount codes (about 1.38 times more than women
on average).
• This suggests men are more discount-sensitive than
women.

11. Recommendations for e-
commece managers
1. Focus on targeting criteria that most effectively
drives behavior (e.g., intent- or interest-based
targeting)
2. Examine how gender differences show in
purchase behavior, especially in the use of
discount coupons
3. Adjust messaging and targeting accordingly.

12. Thank you!