Online group-buying is more and more popular, and under the trend, more and more group-buying websites are established. We all know the every website has different strategy--some offer special service, some offer special discount, and some offer special goods. And which one is much better? On the other hand, what kind of customer will shop via the group-buying websites? If the online-buying experience affect the behavior? The purpose of the research is to analysis the different strategies among the online group-buying platform. Besides, the research also tries to find if the different using experiences from these platforms will differ the group-buying behavior. The research result indicates that the group-buying websites which offer price discounts and purchasing-related service are easy to get better performance. And the friendly operating instructions could lower the resistance for customers to join into the websites.

With the development of electronic commerce and online group-buying, many studies tried to explore theories about online group-buying. Following the recent development of online group-buying, this research tries to provide a comprehensive framework to study online group-buying by proposing five different dimensions as a basis to develop various group-buying models. The five dimensions are initiator, price variety, bargain power, reservation price, and number of negotiators. The developed group-buying models are categorized into two categories, negotiating price before forming coaliation and negotiation price after forming coaliation. In addition, we also tried to analyze online group-buying model or behavior based on microeconomic theory. Hopefully, it can open a new research area in online group-buying models.

The essence of online group-buying is to lower the price by gathering orders However, the process is filled with uncertainty and risks, such as the number of joining members, the final price, the quality of products, and even the trustworthiness of the initiators. Generally speaking, consumers tend to reduce risks by searching more information. The more uncertainties there are, the more information seeking should be. Online feedback mechanism is often adopted as a strategy to lower risks and uncertainties. Both e-Bay and Yahoo provide such feedback mechanisms. In addition, the larger the number of accumulated orders is, the higher possibilities to lower the price and risk will be. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore how the online feedback mechanism and the number of accumulated orders impact consumers¡¦ perceived risk and trust in the initiator and furthermore, how the perceived risk and trust impact consumers¡¦ behavior in online group buying. The study shows that the content of the online feedback mechanism has significant impact on consumers¡¦ perceived financial risk, performance risk, total risk and the trust in initiator as well. The more negative the content is, the more risks the consumers perceive and the less trust in the initiators the consumers have. Furthermore, different contents will result in different kinds of risks perceived by consumers. With larger number of accumulated orders, consumers have more trust in initiators. Additionally, consumers have higher intentions to join group-buying when they perceive lower risk and more trust in initiators. Therefore, consumers¡¦ intentions to join group-buying have significant impact on their actual behavior.

Online shopping involves more uncertainty and risk than traditional shopping. These phenomena are even obvious in online group-buying. One of the main factors causing the uncertainty and risk is the role of the initiator. Since it is quite often that the initiators themselves are consumers, the initiators are not as huge and professional as the sellers. Clearly the trust in initiator becomes a major concern when joining the online group-buying. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this research is to understand how initiator¡¦s reputation, interactions with initiator, consumers¡¦ perceived risk and personal characteristics impact consumers¡¦ trust in the initiators and then how the consumers¡¦ perceived trust in the initiators, subjective norm and familiarity with online group-buying together impact the consumers¡¦ behavior in group-buying. The study result indicates that the perceived initiator¡¦s reputation, interaction with initiator, perceived risks in online group-buying, and subjective norm impact the trust in initiator. Moreover, based on TPB, the trust has significant effects on consumer¡¦s intention to join online group-buying. Subjective norm has impacted the consumer¡¦s intention to join online group-buying not only directly but also through the trust in initiator indirectly. However, the familiarity with online group-buying has no significant effects on consumer¡¦s intention to join online group-buying.

Convenience and price are the main considerations of the consumers on internet shopping. "Group buying" is a consumption pattern emerging in recent years; it can be used in many places and has become a mainstream. The consumer now through the ¡§group buying¡¨ to reduce their living expenses. The earlier group buying was focus on the products of foods, and physical goods. But through the development of internet, the new internet group buying has been different. It¡¦s not only focused on the foods and physical goods, but also includes all kind of entertainment (cosmetology, outdoor events¡Ketc.). In this study, we regarded the consumers who were ever participated in the new online group shopping as our main target. Through this research, we can understand the consumer¡¦s lifestyle, personality and involvement of new online group shopping. It also can provide a direction for online shopping industry in the future.

The beauty of group-buying is that the price will go down as the value of accumulated orders is increasing. However, the beauty cannot be realized if many customers are waiting have a lower price. Therefore, it may affect the performance of the group-buying. How to design different incentives to induce customers to join the group-buying as early as possible is the purpose of this study. In the light of inducing buyers to join the group-buying as early as possible, three incentive mechanisms, time-based, quantity-based, and sequence-based, are proposed. In order to verify the performance of the three proposed new group-buying models compared with that of the traditional group-buying model, an experiment was implemented. According to the results of the experiment, we found that the time-based model can reduce customers¡¦ decision time before joining the group-buying. While the sequence-based model also can push customers to join the group-buying in the very beginning. As for the quantity-based model, it is in our expectation that the customers buy more than their original plan in order to get more discounts. We also observe that buyers' satisfaction is higher if the group-buying model can effectively reduce the price. Furthermore, the earlier customers join the group-buying, more satisfactions they will get. Besides, the buyers also agree with that the group-buying model can effectively reduce the price. Furthermore, we discover that the perceived value, perceived usefulness, and perceived easy of use can positively affect the buyers' attitude, and consequently, buyers are willing to join the group-buying in the future.

In the group-buying transaction, consumers will not know the final price until the transaction is closed. It means that there are uncertainties of the final price and time to reach a desired price. In other words, consumers have financial risk and time risk in group-buying transactions. In addition, different pricing strategies of group-buying may result in different risks. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the perceived risks of consumers affect their intentions to participate the online group-buying with different pricing mechanisms, i.e. decreasing, neutral and increasing. The result shows that because group-buying models with different pricing mechanisms have different initial prices, final prices and discounts, the risks perceived by consumers are different and then, affect consumers¡¦ intention to participate the online group-buying. Among these three pricing mechanisms, decreasing pricing mechanism makes consumers perceive higher risk than other pricing mechanisms because its initial price is higher. The more the consumers¡¦ perceived risks are, the lower the consumers¡¦ intentions to participate the online group-buying are. Therefore, group-buying with decreasing pricing mechanism can not attract consumers to join the online group-buying efficiently. Furthermore, this study finds that perceived usefulness and satisfaction affect consumers¡¦ intentions to participate the online group-buying significantly. In addition, all consumers¡¦ perceived risks, perceived usefulness and intentions to participate online group-buying influence consumers¡¦ actual participating behavior significantly.

In recent years, many virtual communities have thrived with the rapid development of Internet. In the environment of virtual community, through the information exchange, members realize that they often have similar demands. In the case of online group-buying, buyers who have a common interest in a certain product group together to collect their collective power and thus get price discounts from suppliers. Hence online group-buying comprehends the need of interest, relationship, and transaction of virtual community. We are questioning whether the group-buying have invisible community relationships embedded in members¡¦ transaction activities. The purpose of this study is by the use of social network analysis to investigate the relationships of the network between initiators and participants and between co-participants. In particular we propose some measures based on social network analysis to help us understand the meanings of relationships of online group-buying network. According to the result of this study, we find the initiators have more power or resources to influence other members of the network between initiators and participants. And some active participants also have more power or resources to influence other participants of the network between co-participants. We also find the active initiators and participants would have more probability to occupy key positions of information flow.

Recently, a new e-commerce business model is booming. It is an electronic-coupon based group-buying model. Its prosperous development has formed a big online group-buying market in which many new websites run similar electronic-coupon based group-buying models. This new electronic-coupon based group-buying model is very different from the traditional one. It is not only that the main type of the products is service-oriented, but also that the object of transaction is electronic coupons which provide the consumers privileges of getting the services in a limited time period. It completely changes consumer behaviors. For these reasons, this study explores how the electronic-coupon based group-buying model succeeds by reviewing the literature and analyzing the data collected from the online website. The results show that both the promotion price and discount rate impact the group-buying performance but the discount rate will have more impact than the promotion price. Further, the limited sale is a good strategy to improve the group-buying performance. Overall, the electronic-coupon based group-buying model performs well in restaurants, cinemas and entertainment industries.

With the rapid growth of virtual communities, more and more group-buying are now held within the communities. However, no study discusses the effect of virtual communities on group-buying. Comparing to other transaction modes, it is easier for consumers to aggregate their demands in virtual communities. The coherence and trust among community members, at the same time, further reduce potential risks in transactions. This study aims to understand factors that affect consumer intentions to join group-buying within the virtual communities and to develop a comprehensive framework. The results indicate that perceived trust in group-buying initiator and perceived trust in other community members are the main factors that influence consumers¡¦ intention to join. Their perceived risk, at the same, has no significant effect. Furthermore, consumers¡¦ involvement in the virtual community has the most effect on their perceived trust in initiators while their perceived trust in other members and the perceived expertise of the initiator are also critical factors. The results implies that the trust among members, which is resulted from their intense interactions, is the key factor of group-buying. The expertise of initiator, meanwhile, is not the critical determinant of group-buying.