Research on the Laboring of Heads of Community Group Buying in the Post-Epidemic Era

Abstract

With the rise of the otaku economy and WeChat mini-programs in the post-epidemic era, community group buying has entered a new stage. Many Internet companies have spared no efforts to invest in developing community group buying in an attempt to seize market traffic. When participating in community group buying, the head of the group purchase is gradually employed by enterprises. By virtue of the research methods including cyber-ethnography and in-depth interviews, this paper explores the operation mode of group buying platform and the employed status of the head of group buying in some communities of Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. On the one hand, the platform controls the labor of the heads through a hidden operation mechanism; On the other hand, the heads as the employees carry out emotional labor in different stages of labor while being involved in capital production. Meanwhile, they also present a struggle against platform operation and algorithm mechanisms.