Role slabých zákazníků v kontextu e-commerce

This master’s thesis examines the role of light buyers in the context of e-commerce. The main aim of the thesis is to determine the significance of light buyers within the customer base of the analyzed e-shop and in generating its revenue and gross profit. A secondary aim is to verify the applicability of the NBD model for predicting the distribution of the number of orders and to compare the results with the study „The Unbearable Lightness of Buying“. The thesis is based on secondary quantitative transactional data from a Czech e-shop focused on the sale of food and health food products for the period 2021–2025. After data cleaning, aggregation, and segmentation, the analysis focused on the size and growth of the customer base, the share of light buyers in the customer base, revenue, and profit, the proportion of customers with no purchase in the previous year, and the ability of the zero-truncated NBD model to approximate the long-term distribution of purchase frequency. The results show that the e-shop’s customer base grew 4.5-fold over five years, with light buyers accounting for 76 % of the entire five-year customer base and one-time buyers representing 53 %. At the same time, light buyers generate 29 % of revenue and 31 % of gross profit, confirming their significant economic contribution. The top 20 % of customers account for 72 % of revenue and 70 % of profit, meaning that the traditional 80/20 rule was not confirmed in the analyzed environment. Customers who had not made a purchase in the previous year represent more than 60 % of the annual customer base in individual years, indicating high customer turnover in the online environment. Although the zero-truncated NBD model captures the basic shape of the distribution of the number of orders, it systematically underestimates one-time buyers and overestimates customers with a higher purchase frequency. The thesis confirms that, even in e-commerce, a company’s long-term performance is built on a broad base of low-frequency buyers, while also extending existing knowledge of their impact on profitability.