The determinants of consumers’ online shopping cart abandonment
Despite placing items in virtual shopping carts, online shoppers frequently abandon them —an issue that perplexes online retailers and has yet to be explained by scholars. Here, we identify key drivers to online cart abandonment and suggest cognitive and behavioral reasons for this non-buyer behavior. We show that the factors influencing consumer online search, consideration, and evaluation play a larger role in cart abandonment than factors at the purchase decision stage. In particular, many customers use online carts for entertainment or as a shopping research and organizational tool, which may induce them to buy at a later session or via another channel. Our framework extends theories of online buyer and non-buyer behavior while revealing new inhibitors to buying in the Internet era. The findings offer scholars a broad explanation of consumer motivations for cart abandonment. For retailers, the authors provide suggestions to improve purchase conversion rates and multi-channel management.
The Effectiveness of Triggered Email Marketing in Addressing Browse Abandonments
Triggered emails are personalized messages that are automatically sent as a response to specific actions or states of customers. Typical examples of this type of campaign include cross-selling recommendations, cart abandonment reminders, and re-engagement emails. Despite the widespread growth of these strategies, there has been no formal evaluation of their effectiveness. This paper investigates the impact of one type of triggered email campaign by using an experimental approach. We identify customers who had recently browsed the website of a multichannel retailer but had abandoned the process before making a purchase. Approximately half of the sample was randomly selected to receive automated emails with different configurations, while the other half receive no message at all. Comparison of the sales of these two groups indicates that browse abandonment emails have increase revenues in the online channel and in the triggered category. In terms of the design of the campaign, we found that the implementation of triggered emails plays an important role in their effectiveness. In this regard our result indicates that retargeting based on longer navigation histories is associated with larger conversions and that recommendations of wider assortments are associated with larger revenues.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.intmar.2021.02.002
What’s the difference between a topology, an ontology and a taxonomy
Taxonomy
How things are classified
A taxonomy is a structured classification system, usually hierarchical.
- Focus: Grouping and labelling
- Structure: Parent–child hierarchies
- Answers: “What type of thing is this?” and “Where does it sit?”
Example
- Education → Undergraduate → Level 4 → Module
- Product → Feature → Sub‑feature
In practice, taxonomies are used for navigation, tagging, filtering, and findability, and are explicitly described in enterprise metadata and taxonomy management work.
Think: A well‑organised folder tree or controlled vocabulary.
Ontology
What things are, and how they relate
An ontology defines:
- Concepts
- Properties
- Relationships
- Rules or constraints
It goes beyond hierarchy to express meaning and semantics.
- Focus: Meaning and relationships
- Structure: Network/graph
- Answers: “What is this?”, “How does it relate to other things?”, “What can be inferred?”
Example
- A Module is part of a Qualification
- A Student enrols in a Module
- An Assessment is submitted by a Student
Ontologies are widely discussed in research paradigms and in modern data/AI systems because they support reasoning and inference, not just classification.
Think: A shared conceptual model of a domain.
Topology
How things are arranged or connected
A topology describes the shape or structure of connections, without focusing on meaning or categories.
- Focus: Arrangement and connectivity
- Structure: Patterns of links
- Answers: “How are things connected or organised in space or structure?”
Examples
- Network topologies (hub‑and‑spoke, mesh)
- Team topologies (stream‑aligned teams, enabling teams)
- System architectures
In organisational and systems contexts, topology is used to visualise flows, dependencies, and interaction patterns, as seen in team and system design materials.
Think: A map of connections, not meanings.
Side‑by‑side summary
| Concept | Core question | What it defines | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taxonomy | What category? | Labels & hierarchies | Navigation, tagging, search |
| Ontology | What is it & how does it relate? | Concepts & semantics | Reasoning, data integration |
| Topology | How is it arranged? | Structural connections | Architecture, systems, teams |
Shortcut
- Taxonomy = classification
- Ontology = meaning
- Topology = structure
Or, in one sentence:
A taxonomy sorts things, an ontology explains them, and a topology shows how they’re connected.