Location and time do matter: A long tail study of website requests

• DOI: 10.1016/j.dss.2009.04.015
• Publication Date: 2009-05-05T08:58:29Z
• Authors: Chetan Kumar; John B. Norris; Yi Sun
• Keywords: 0502 economics and business; 05 social sciences

There has been a tremendous growth in the amount and range of information available on the Internet. The users' requests for online information can be captured by a long tail model. A few popular websites enjoy a high number of visitations while the majority of the rest are less frequently requested. In this study we use real world data to investigate this phenomenon and show that both users' physical location and time of access affect the heterogeneity of website requests. The effect can partially be explained by differences in demographic characteristics at locations and diverse user browsing behavior in weekdays and weekends. These results can be used to design better online marketing strategies, affiliate advertising models, and Internet caching algorithms with sensitivities to user location and time of access differences.