Are you a local or a visitor? : An exploratory study on consumer behavior in online group buying commerce

Abstract

With the rapid growth of online daily deals, the behaviors of consumers in such online group buying commerce have become popular research topics. We examine the effects of the period, price, discount rate and product category on sales in the context that local consumers and visitors purchase the restaurant coupons in a group buying electronic marketplace. Applying the conjoint analysis algorithm, we study the actual transactional data sets on the Dianping.com, one of the largest online group buying commerce businesses. The results show that there is a clear discrepancy between the preferences of the two consumer groups. The local consumers tend to think high of discounts while the visitors likely care more on product category. In addition, the behaviors of two groups are different in product attribute selections. The findings could be useful to the businesses in terms of understanding the customers' purchasing and product designs. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).