Research Of Group Buying Based On Group Identity

ABSTRACT:With the rapid development of group buying, consumers are increasingly participating the group buying. Recent years, however, as most of group buying business models are homogenous and lack of model innovation, a large number of group buying sites had to take layoff and even collapse. Aiming at this serious issue, this research has made many pre-studies. We found the most domestic group buying model is mainly based on the product and low price to attract consumers without the limit of deadline and group number, which makes group buying model lose the advantage of group buying mechanism design and ignore the huge influence of consumers product information sharing and communication in the virtual community. This current group business model cannot improve the consumers brand loyalty or awareness of the brand. However, consumers in the virtual community share product information and experience regularly, which provide group buying with a desirable platform to make consumers increase the efficiency of group buying information sharing, and keep the loyalty of consumers to the brand. Based on the above pre-studies, this research includes the two core content. Firstly, to find out the key factors which determine the group buying as dominate strategy, this study explores the group buying mechanism design by establishing group buying mechanism model based on Product Life Cycle Theory, Consumer Surplus Theory and Incentive Compatibility Theory. Secondly, this paper makes the further study on the virtual community factors which can make group buying become into dominate strategy.The fist study result demonstrates that constraint conditions of group buying as dominate strategy have to meet two requirements. Consumer’s product information gap has to be in a moderate level and information sharing between consumers has to be efficient. In order to further study the influence factors of the efficiency of information sharing between consumers, this research establish a hypothesis model of virtual community factors impact on the information sharing efficiency based on the Theory of Common Identity and Common Bond from social psychology. We collected329questionnaires from18virtual communities with group buying experience, and analyze the collected data through SPSS15.0and AMOS7.0. the statistical results indicate that the social classification, interpersonal dependence and intergroup comparison influence on common identity positively, interpersonal interaction, the personal information and the individual interest similarity influence on bond identity positively, consumers recognizing the information can improve the self-efficacy of initiator and the group buying information sharing efficiency among the community members. Finally, this study examined the moderate effect on goods attribute. The results show that the goods attribute has moderate effect on common identity and members’recognition to group buying information while the goods attribute has moderate effect on common bond and members’ recognition to group buying information.Most of the studies of group buying are mainly concentrated in group buying model description and group-buying auction, however, few studies have involved in the group buying mechanism design and the constraint of group buying as a dominate strategy. This research explored the key factors to determine group buying as a dominate strategy, which deepen the understanding the essence of group buying model. More important, this study explored the consumers’information sharing efficiency based on Common Identity and Common Bond Theory. The conclusions makes firms being aware of the impact factors on group buying as dominate strategy in virtual community context, which provides theoretical and marketing practice guidance to group buying as dominate strategy for related firms.