Trajectories of individual WWW usage: implications for electronic commerce

The number and variety of Web sites offering information, commerce and services has multiplied since 1995. The number of users making use of the Internet and the Web has also grown tremendously. Yet at the level of the individual, little is known about the trajectory of change over time in number of visits to Web sites. Drawing upon recent advances in semi-parametric, group-based statistical modeling, we examine whether there are distinctive clusters of such trajectories. Using longitudinal data from 1995-1998 on visits to distinctive Web sites, we provide answers to these questions. We find that WWW users can be clustered into four groups with distinct trajectories of use. These groups achieve saturation in their extent of Web usage as measured in the number of distinct Web sites they visit over time. We also develop demographic profiles of these different user groups. These results have important implications for Internet marketing.