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found no
alternative
Look for
alternative
payment method
Abort
buying
no
Is favorite
payment method
available?
found
alternative
yes
Use
payment
method
Buying
Fig. 2.
Model of the payment behavior
available, then the customer will use this method and the payment process is
finished. Otherwise the customer will cancel the buying or look for an alternative
payment method in the shop. We define the function
fav
that yields the proba-
bility for a certain payment method
Z
i
(e.g. invoice, credit card, prepayment or
cash on delivery) to be the favorite type of payment
fav
:
Z →
[0
,
1]
∈
R
.
(1)
Based on studies [2,3] and the evaluation of real payment data, we identify a
dependency between the favorite payment method and the gender. For instance,
credit card is preferably used by men and invoice is preferably used by women.
Hence, we distinguish between the functions
fav
m
and
fav
f
for men and female,
respectively. As the two functions
fav
m
and
fav
f
cannot be determine directly
from the shop data, we have to derive these functions from the gender-neutral
function
. We assume the following two conditions. First, the gender-neutral
favored payment method is the male-specific favored payment method times the
probability that a consumer is male
fav
) plus the female-specific favored
payment method times the probability that a consumer is female
P
(
male
P
(
female
).
Formally, this is defined as:
fav
(
Z
i
)=
fav
m
(
Z
i
)
· P
(
male
)+
fav
f
(
Z
i
)
· P
(
female
)
.
(2)
Second, the ratio
r
(
Z
i
) of the payment method
Z
i
is specified as the quotient of
fav
f
(
Z
i
)and
fav
m
(
Z
i
), formaly defined as:
r
(
Z
i
)=
fav
f
(
Z
i
)
fav
m
(
Z
i
)
.
(3)
Based on equation (2) and (3), we derive the favorite payment method for men
and women as follows:
fav
(
Z
i
)
fav
m
(
Z
i
)=
(4)
P
(
male
)+
r
(
Z
i
)
· P
(
female
)
(5)
If the favored payment method is not available, then the customer will look for
an alternative payment method in the shop or cancel the buying. The customer
fav
f
(
Z
i
)=
fav
m
(
Z
i
)
· r
(
Z
i
)
.
