Group-buying Websites Research Articles

Studying Customer E-loyalty to Online Intermediary: Case of Group Buying Site

Studying Customer E-loyalty to Online Intermediary: Case of Group Buying Site

How does group-buying website quality for social commerce affect repurchase intention? Evidence from Chinese online users

PurposeThe success of social commerce group-buying information system (IS) is not a simple accumulation of functions, but a complex process of system integration that makes it difficult to design a high-quality website to improve the conversion rate of users has become a top priority for online companies. The purpose of this study is to further improve the IS success model to adapt to the new research scenarios and explore the boundary conditions between different satisfaction and repurchase intention.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the users who have used the group-buying website quality for social commerce in the last 6 months are the objects of this study. Finally, 436 valid data were collected by questionnaire survey and analyzed by Smart PLS.FindingsThe results indicate that the four dimensions of website quality enhance consumers' economic satisfaction and social satisfaction, except that the path of system quality and social satisfaction is not significant. Economic satisfaction and social satisfaction also have a significant positive effect on repurchase intentions. Besides, the interactive effect of customer involvement and economic satisfaction has no significant impact on repurchase intention, but customer involvement plays a moderate role in the path of social satisfaction on repurchase intention.Originality/valuen order to make the IS success model better evaluate the characteristics of social commerce sites comprehensively, this present research introduces the measurement construct of interaction quality. Moreover, this study examines the effect of mechanism of economic satisfaction and social satisfaction on repurchase intention from the perspective of practical benefit and psychology. Finally, the boundary conditions of the effect of satisfaction on repurchase intention are explored.

Cultural Perspectives of Millennials’ Decision-Making Styles in Online Group Buying

The spread of globalization and Internet-related technologies have contributed toward the emergence of convergence, divergence, and global consumer culture as three alternative perspectives to explain cross-cultural consumption, and yet no consensus has evolved. The study tests the veracity of the respective claims by comparing the relationships between the decision-making styles of U.S. and German millennials and their intentions to purchase from a cross-culturally cloned group-buying site popular in both countries. Results show that while there is a convergence of the novelty-fashion-conscious, price-conscious, “value for money,” recreational, hedonistic, and impulsive, careless decision-making styles of U.S. and German millennials, there is a divergence of their perfectionistic, high-quality-conscious, brand-conscious, “price equals quality”, habitual, brand-loyal, and confused by overchoice decision-making styles. Taken together, the results support the prevalence of the global consumer culture approach. We offer implications toward building more comprehensive theoretical frameworks for analyzing cross-cultural consumption among millennials and for multinational website managers to improve their understanding of millennial consumption.

Mobike China: competing through the giant’s ecosystem

Learning outcomes Students will be able to analyse competitive situations of the focal firm in the platform market, factors that make the focal firm become dominant in the sharing economy through the technology platform and the focal firm’s motives and growth strategies through mergers and acquisitions and overseas expansion, as well as give recommendations on the focal firm’s strategies to move forward to achieve and maintain its competitive position in the platform market. Case overview/synopsis On 4th April, 2018, Meituan-Dianping (Meituan), a Chinese group-buying website for consumer products and retail services acquired Mobike, a Chinese dockless bike-sharing platform for US$2.7bn. Mobike had raised several rounds of funding for its large investments and operations in this highly competitive and cash-intensive industry. However, it was still struggling to survive and make a profit in the Chinese and overseas markets. It was believed that the merger between the companies was the only viable alternative. Had Meituan’s Chief Executive Officer made the right decision in acquiring Mobike? After Mobike became an integral part of Meituan, what should be done to turn this technology platform to be profitable in the Chinese and overseas market? Complexity academic level The case is intended for senior undergraduate or graduate-level courses in business schools. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy.

Sustainable Development of Online Group-Buying Websites: An Integrated Perspective of ECM and Relationship Marketing

Online group buying (OGB) is a unique, innovative, and interesting online business model that seems to have a bright future. However, many group buying websites (GBWs) have not stood the test of time. Different from traditional e-commerce websites, GBWs create a rich value experience for consumers, but no research has explored how these benefits help GBWs achieve sustainable development. In this study, the expectation confirmation model (ECM) and relationship marketing are integrated to explore how these multi-dimensional perceived values influence relationship quality (satisfaction and relationship commitment) and ultimately shape loyalty (continuous intention and positive electronic word of mouth (eWOM)). The research model and hypotheses are empirically tested with 278 valid responses using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that satisfaction (SAT) and relationship commitment (RC) are primary antecedents of continuous intention (CI) and positive eWOM (PE). We found interesting differences in the effects of multi-dimensional perceived values on relationship quality and loyalty. Hedonic value can help GBWs improve relationship quality and directly promote the spread of PE, thus attracting new users. Utilitarian value can only increase satisfaction and directly affect CI, helping GBW retain existing users. Social value cannot improve user satisfaction, but it can help GBW develop long-term emotional connections with users and indirectly shape user loyalty. Finally, the implication, limitations, and future research directions are described.

Research on Pricing Models and Strategies of Online Group-Buying

In recent years, the Online Group-Buying has entered a state of development in full swing. The particularity of the OGB platform compared with the traditional market determines that its marketing and price setting model must be different from the traditional market. Based on the summary of domestic and foreign scholars’ literature on the pricing and strategy research of group buying business models, this article analyzes various factors affecting group buying prices. Under various assumptions, parameters and variables, through mathematical calculation and analysis, the optimal price and maximum profit for the healthy development of the enterprise are obtained, and how the merchants on the group buying website should adopt corresponding price-setting strategies and profit models to made some suggestions.

An Empirical Analysis of Dimensional Trust in Online Group Buying Sites

Building websites that generate adequate perception of ability, integrity, and benevolence dimensions of trust amongst even the first-time visitors is critically important for online group buying (OGB) sites; otherwise, visitors may be reluctant to transact. Current literature suggests that certain website features can induce overall trust perception (TP); however, their impact on specific trust dimensions has received little attention resulting in scholarly and managerial lacunae to precisely diagnose and remedy the problem with TP. To address this knowledge gap, this study first categorizes the trust-inducing features and then explores their impact on the trust dimensions of an OGB website in India. The results indicate differential impact of feature categories on the trust dimensions, thereby revealing new insights into the theory and practice of achieving targeted trust perception in online retail stores. The study describes limitations and offers meaningful scholarly and managerial implications.

Effects of cue congruence and perceived cue authenticity in online group buying

PurposeThe study investigates how the congruence of online deal popularity and star rating influences service quality expectation in online group buying (OGB) websites. It also investigates the role of authenticity perceptions of online cues.Design/methodology/approachTwo experiments are used to assess the effects of congruence between deal popularity and star rating on service quality expectation for service deals in an OGB website.FindingsThe findings suggest that a combination of congruently high deal popularity and high star rating has a stronger effect on expected service quality than a combination of congruently low cues. The findings further suggest that expected service quality is greater under the combination of high deal popularity and low star rating than the combination of low deal popularity and high star rating, showing the differences between incongruent cue combinations. The findings also show the moderating effect of consumer authenticity perceptions of cues on the expected service quality.Originality/valueThe novel contribution of the study is to extend cue congruence theory to explain how congruent online information cues and the consumers' authenticity perceptions of the cues influence consumers' judgment of online deals. The contribution is validated empirically in the context of OGB. The findings advance current knowledge concerning how consumers use online information cues.

Assessment Model for Improving Group-Buying Websites Based on A Novel Hybrid Approach

Assessment Model for Improving Group-Buying Websites Based on A Novel Hybrid Approach

Allocation and pricing of group-buying based on the fixed bidding

Online group-buying is a popular business mode based on Internet. Group-buying websites can get discount for goods or services through promotion and other means which used to gather enough number of people, and sellers can also sell more quantities of goods. However, the existing group-buying mode is that all buyers unify the fixed pricing, the mechanism cannot distinguish the contribution of different buyers and motivate buyers report truthfully. In this paper, an online group-buying pricing method based on buyer’s fixed bidding is proposed in view of the influence of buyer’s bidding price and demand quantity on the participants’ group in the group-buying mechanism. We introduce the concept of relative importance to the allocation and pricing of mechanisms and propose a new mechanism named Fixed bids Truthful Mechanism for Group Buying (FTM4GB) based on correlation importance. At the end of the paper, we prove the economic attributes of individual rationality, incentive compatibility and budget balance.

New E-Commerce Business Models can Boost its Development: Case of North Macedonia

The Internet and new technology has transformed many business models and made new to appear. The advent of e-commerce has led to the creation of many new business models and affected the way of shopping goods and services. A new interesting business model that emerged in 2008 is the group buying model. It was launched by Groupon, and very soon the concept attracted interest around the world and spread through the clones in many countries all over the world. In North Macedonia Grouper introduced this concept at the beginning of 2011, and few more group buying web sites emerged soon. The new business model initiated the revolution of the e-commerce in the country, a field that was rather disappointing so far. The goal of this article is to show that attractiveness of the deals offered by group buying site can influence the online shopping and ecommerce development. Secondary data research from relevant sources is done. The number of online transactions in 2011 rose for over 1200 % comparing to 2010 and one-third of these transactions were made by group buying sites. In the following years the number of Internet users who have made orders online constantly increases.

Coordination of traditional and online group-buying channels considering website promotion effort

The development of modern technology and e-commerce have given rise to the emergence of many new selling channels. Among one of them, group-buying attracts numerous new customers rapidly due to the characters of deep discounts and great convenience. Although deep discounts create sales growth for sellers, it also causes the loss in their profit margins. Meanwhile, the business model of group-buying websites is not thoroughly understood in literature. Based on a Stackelberg game framework, this paper studies the equilibrium between a group-buying website and a seller. The optimal pricing and channel decisions of the seller and the optimal group-buying pricing and promotion effort decisions for the website are investigated to offer guidance for their businesses. We find that the total profit of the whole system could be hurt when the agreement price or revenue sharing contracts are adopted by the firms. We propose a revenue-cost sharing contract that could coordinate the total profit. Finally, we show how the scale of the seller and the website and the unit cost influence the optimal decisions in the equilibrium.

Studying the relationship between the perceived value of online group-buying websites and customer loyalty: the moderating role of referral rewards

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effect of perceived value on customer loyalty through affective commitment in the online group-buying (OGB) context. This paper addressed the following questions: what are the factors affecting customer loyalty (i.e. revisit intention and buy more intention); and how do referral rewards moderate the impact of affective commitment on customer loyalty?Design/methodology/approachAll data were collected from OGB websites’ members in Taiwan. The total number of respondents to the online survey was 403. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test a perceived value–commitment–loyalty model.FindingsThis study shows that three proposed antecedents (i.e. OGB scheme value, hedonic value and social value) can trigger customer loyalty through affective commitment. Monetary savings, a variety of merchandise and aspirational products are all critical OGB scheme value components. The results also show that referral reward importance positively moderates the relationship between affective commitment and revisit intention.Practical implicationsThe findings have implications for managing people and work tasks in OGB websites. First, understanding the importance of dimensions of value should enable OGB managers to develop more accurate targeting strategies. This study provides guidance on the design of the platform and the OGB scheme, for the effective allocating of marketing resources. Second, a referral reward mechanism can be a critical CRM tool; in addition to the potential to attract new customers, they can also help to retain existing customers. This mechanism is a very effective method to enhance customer stickiness.Originality/valueThe marketing literature generally recognizes the importance of developing and maintaining long-term relationships with customers. This study is the first one to explore the importance of affective commitment in developing and sustaining loyal relationships in the OGB context. Referral rewards are an important moderator variable: affective commitment has a stronger effect on the revisit intention when the referral rewards are high. The findings of this study provide insights into how OGB website developers can create customer commitment and more effectively retain existing customers through the use of referral rewards.

Optimal Strategy for Selling on GB Website Considering the Effect of Service Guarantee

This paper analyses whether sellers should join group-buying website and how to join group-buying website by evaluating both the service guarantee level and seller’s online price. In this study, we find that startup sellers will gain profit by joining group-buying website and these sellers should increase his service guarantee level after joining GB website. All these findings are important for sellers’ GB strategy.

Pricing for Products in Website-Dominant Static Group-buying

We develop a game model to describe the game between a seller and a group-buying website in order to study the operating mode of Chinese static group-buying(GB). A seller sells products by a website and allocates a proportion of revenue to it. Based on this mode we establish the profit function of the seller and that of the GB website. The website decides its allocation proportion and the sale price of its products according to the profit maximization principle and the revenue sharing proportion in the contract. We then analyze the relationship among different parameters and find that the products’ price decreasing with the increasing of the revenue sharing proportion. In addition, there also exists an optimal GB period to maximize the seller’s profit in a GB.

Joint quality and pricing decisions for service online group-buying strategy

We examine the role of quality in a service sellers group-buying strategy.We compare offline strategy and group-buying strategy.We show that service quality should be enhanced if adopting group buying strategy.The website scale and trading commission are major issues in group-buying strategy. In this paper, we study the popular group-buying model in which a seller offers a discount on group-buying websites to attract new customers coming to experience his/her service. We analyze the conditions under which a seller could benefit from the group-buying strategy, in addition to discussing the optimal decisions concerning service quality and online price. We find that only when the website scale is sufficiently large will the seller benefit from adopting the group-buying strategy. We also consider the customers substitution effect, that is, the existing offline customers turn to an online channel when the seller offers a discount on the group-buying website. When the website scale is relatively small and the substitution rate is high, the seller cannot benefit from group-buying. The seller should set a service quality higher than the base service quality when he/she cooperates with large group-buying websites. Moreover, compared to purely offline businesses, the seller will set a higher quality level if adopting a group-buying strategy.

Optimal price and maximum deal size on group-buying websites for sellers with finite capacity

This paper presents an analytical model for sellers with finite capacity to optimise their price and maximum deal size limit on group-buying websites. For the general demand functions that satisfy some mild regularity conditions, the optimal strategies and the corresponding deal parameters are characterised. The optimal strategies demonstrate that deep online discounts (selling products below the cost or even selling products for free) can be optimal if the maximum deal size is used strategically. Moreover, deep discounts can be beneficial even if the capacity is tight, which explains the use of deep discounts commonly observed in practice. Our results also provide the operators of group-buying websites with useful suggestions on how to induce sellers to offer deep discounts. Sensitivity analysis with regard to the minimum deal size and capacity is provided. Our analysis shows that counter-intuitively selling out capacity may not always be optimal, even if the amount of capacity cannot satisfy the unconstrained optimal sales quantity online. Finally, we extend the model to consider offline prices being sellers’ decisions and discuss the robustness of the optimal strategies when the demand is stochastic.

Evaluation of the impact of promotional campaign through a social networks on the key performance indicators of website for online of group-buying in Brazil

Relevance of the study: Based on data collection and analysis, present research made it possible to identify how the activities devised by a group-buying website on Facebook may exert influence on the KPIs for success.
 Purpose: The main task of present research is to answer the following question: can a digital social network be considered an effective tool for the improvement of key performance indicators (KPI) of a group-buying website?
 Findings: The research was conducted by considering data collected via mechanical observation using the computational tools Facebook Dashboard and Google Analytics. Data were analyzed using the means of comparison and a Pearson correlation coefficient, which demonstrated positive results of the campaign. When compared, the key performance indicators of the web site relating to Facebook displayed a larger dynamics than the general performance indicators of this web site. By the correlation coefficient, it was found that a higher power range of the Facebook Enterprise´s fan page could result in the increased traffic page hits of the examined web site, and an increase, mainly, in the number of new visitors.
 Originality / value: This paper analyzes some key performance indicators of a promotional campaign on Facebook for an online group-buying website in the city of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo State, Brazil.
 Practical implications: Based on the collected data and performed analysis, it was found that the promotional activities on Facebook can increase the flow of new visitors and attract potential buyers to a group-buying website.
 Future research: It is recommended to perform further research for other social networks and in other countries.

A study on information disclosure, trust, reducing search cost, and online group-buying intention

Purpose More and more disputes have quickly emerged and accumulated, hence generating uncertainties and doubts among consumers regarding the online group-buying. In order to decrease such uncertainties, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among information disclosure, trust, reducing search cost, and online group-buying intention, as well as proposing concrete suggestions for enhancing online group-buying intention. Design/methodology/approach In order to explore the relationships among information disclosure, trust, reducing search cost, and online group-buying intention, the questionnaire and statistical analytical techniques were used. Moreover, as this study was an early attempt to develop a model for information disclosure, trust, reducing search cost, and online group-buying intention, partial least square therefore was appropriately to analyze data. Findings The results showed that the level of information disclosure and trust on a group-buying website have positive influence on reducing search costs, while reducing search costs and trust have positive influences on online group-buying intention. Research limitations/implications This research applied a purposive sampling method and obtained a slightly inadequate number of respondents. Therefore, it is suggested that future research should apply a random sampling method to collect more responses and increase the generalizability of the findings. Practical implications By more actively disclosing information it is possible for group-buying websites to increase consumer trust and decrease search costs, thus enhancing their group-buying intentions. Originality/value There are few studies on the relationships among reducing search cost, trust, and group-buying intention from the perspective of information disclosure. This study thus applies a questionnaire survey method to explore the relationships among them. This study also offers concrete suggestions to enhance group-buying intentions, and provides marketing strategies that can be used by online group-buying websites to raise their sales.

A secure mobile group buying system based on the concept of spontaneity

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a secure mobile group-buying system for application on spontaneous group-buying websites. Design/methodology/approach The proposed mechanism uses the Schnorr digital signature technique. Findings The proposed scheme is able to satisfy many security requirements. The computation costs of each phase and party were also analyzed, and the communication cost of each phase was calculated. Originality/value The results indicate that the proposed scheme is suitable for real-world application.