Analyzing classified listings at an E-commerce site by using survival analysis

Abstract

Sahibinden.com is a leading e-commerce site in Turkey where sellers (buyers) may advertise their goods (needs) with or without a fee.  Since it generates a large volume of traffic to the classified car listings, the site plays an important role for determining the market value of the used cars. In this study, we first randomly selected 200 car classifieds from 950 new classified ads on the day of February 22, 2012. We then observed these listings on a daily basis for a month to determine the possible updates and deletions of the ads. We assume that if an ad is taken out it means that the car has been sold. In addition to the cars’ features, we observed the posted price and the number of daily views of the ads throughout the data collection. Therefore one can construct survival models to study the effects of the features and price of a car on the life of the ad. In other words, it is possible to study that what features and price levels expedite the sales of used cars.