Discount rate hurts group buying? An empirical study from catering industry

Abstract

With the development of online group buying, more and more experts are beginning to focus on this emerging e-commerce model. Based on the data from Dianping.com, our study examined the impact of discount rate on the consumers' group buying behavior, considering the star, the score, the location and other factors as control variables. Our results suggest that the discount rate has a significant negative impact on the consumers' group buying behavior, and selling price, the effective period, the number of restaurant and the locations will reduce this effect, and the score and the star will increase this effect. The findings of our research can help online group buying restaurants to make a reasonable price decision. © 2016 IEEE.