Consumer’s Revisit Behavior in Online Group-Buying: A Shopping Value Perspective

There is a tremendous growth of online group-buying (OGB) in recent years. Under the intensive market competition, customer’s revisit behavior is essential for OGB websites to survive. Drawing upon the shopping value perspective, this paper identifies the unique features of OGB and investigates the impacts of these features on customer shopping value and revisit behaviors. A theoretical model was developed and tested by 258 valid responses collected through an online survey. The results show that both the hedonic value and utilitarian value are salient in OGB context and the identified OGB features significantly influence the shopping value. Further, the effects of shopping value vary among different visit channels

Herd Behavior In Global Online Shopping Carnival

We have witnessed the magnificent power of herd behavior exhibited by the frantic crowd during the Alibaba’s global online shopping carnival (OSC) which has made 9 Ginness world’s records within 24 hours. This study explores the cognitive herding process and the critical factors facilitating herd behavior in OSC. Meanwhile, applying the theory of carnival, this study identifies three OSC behaviors which spread through the OSC herd. Using 473 samples from OSC participants, the hypotheses are supported by the empirical results. Information incentive (e.g. promotion motivation and review information) and social influence (e.g. peer mimicry and endorsement influence) are two crucial preconditions for herd behavior; participation, interaction and playfulness capture the essence of OSC behavior. The results provide insights to: (1). the cognitive process of herd behavior; (2). the critical factors facilitating herd behavior in OSC; (3) the important OSC behavior imitated during the herding process

How do you feel when you see a list of prices? the interplay among price dispersion, perceived risk and initial trust in Chinese C2C market

The issues of trust fraud, product genuineness and price dispersion jointly make Chinese C2C buyers difficult to identify trustworthy sellers with a low price. Little is known about the generation of initial trust when buyers search products and receive lists of widely ranged prices. This study proposes a theoretical model to explain how price dispersion interacts with other factors in C2C purchase, such as initial trust, perceived risk, perceived value and purchase intention. Product type is considered as a moderator. 261 students were invited in a survey-based experiment. The results from PLS analysis show that price dispersion negatively affects perceived value, whilst, positively affects perceived risk, which further influences perceived value negatively. Price dispersion also negatively influences initial trust through perceived risk. Moreover, the negative effects of price dispersion are stronger when buyers purchase high-touch products

The Effects of price comparsion site on price perception and value perception of online consumer

Thesis(Master) --KDI School:Master of Business Administration,2007masterpublishedby Sun Lee

IT-Enabled Coordination In Electronic Markets: An Experimental Investigation Of The Effects Of Social Communication On Group Buyers

Coordination, and the mechanisms by which coordination occurs, represents a significant area of study for economic research, and information technology. Technology enhances communication in both speed and quantity of information and when aligned with appropriate tasks can improve decision-making and task performance. Examining the effect of technology based coordination mechanisms on market platforms provides insight into outcomes as represented by buyer surplus and task completion as well as behaviors, such as network structure and emotional attitudes in economic experiments. Drawing on theory from economics and information systems, larger buyer groups should be able to obtain better prices and extract higher surplus from sellers, and in the presence of higher levels of communication, buyers should be better able to coordinate their actions, yielding higher surpluses as predicted by countervailing power theory. However, increased communication, while allowing for more collaboration, requires increased coordination. Thus, while larger groups should get better outcomes the complexity of forming groups proves challenging. The increased levels of communication create noise which hinders the time it takes to complete tasks thereby suppressing buyer profits. Galbraith (1952) explained that increased cooperation among buyers would lower prices, but that these lower prices were found in the establishment of intermediaries, through countervailing power theory. However, individual consumers could never exercise this power, because coordination and communication costs were too high. This dissertation tests countervailing power theory under a specific economic market, group buying suited for interdependent tasks. An experimental simulation is created that tests the effects of different levels of communication and group size, and examines the results of buyer surplus and time to task completion as well as their interaction effects. The experiment also examines the structural nature of the group-buying network and analyzes the rich qualitative data for insight into the role of emotions in group buying. The results could be used to further design additional experimental simulations to tests these classic economic theories while provide insight into the design of electronic markets