مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

The global economic downturn that world markets experienced at the end of the first decade of the 21st century has had significant repercussions on the way contemporary businesses perceive the market and devise their marketing strategies. For many businesses, the target markets they serve have displayed eroding confidence and buying power and thus have set stricter priorities and reduced their spending (Quelch & Jocz, 2009). However, no two economic downturns are exactly alike (Almunia, Benetrix, Eichengreen, O’Rourke, & Rua, 2010), which puts business marketers in poorly chartered waters and creates greater pressure to find innovative solutions that will not only ensure business survival during such challenging times but also generate desired profits and returns on investment.

One business model that has emerged from the recent world economic crisis is online group buying (OGB). Originated in the late 2008s by Groupon in the United States, this new and innovative business model has since taken the world by storm—businesses and consumers alike. The basic tenet of this business model is that an agent (1) facilitates the marketing exchange process between buyers and sellers over the Internet for either a commission based on a percentage from sales or a nominal service charge from sellers and (2) utilizes the collective buying power of consumers to persuade sellers to offer products at lower prices in return for immediate and greater numbers of products sold (Lim, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2017). Thus, OGB websites serve as a channel for businesses to gain an immediate pool of large groups of customers and for consumers to enjoy products at lower prices (Lim & Ting, 2014).

On the surface, the OGB business model appears to create a win-win situation for all parties involved in the transaction (i.e., businesses [as sellers], consumers [as buyers], and OGB website operators [as agents between buyers and sellers]). For example, extant cooperative strategy literature shows that businesses that form cooperative alliances, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, can leverage their collective strength to negotiate for better deals and lower prices from their suppliers, which in turn will benefit from an immediate pool of larger business-to-business (B2B) customers (e.g., Chang, Chiang, & Pai, 2012; Griffith & Pol, 1994; Hult, Ketchen, & Chabowski, 2007; Mudambi & Aggarwal, 2003). However, to better understand how the OGB business model can bring greater benefits and reduce any shortcomings to the parties involved, there is a need to explore the opportunities and challenges that characterize the business model. More specifically, OGB is a new and innovative business model that, to date, has not been fully investigated. Identifying and evaluating the extant contribution (and feasibility) of OGB as a business solution to attaining desired business goals, such as those related to customer awareness, acquisition, and retention and direct- and cross-selling of products (Geiger & Turley, 2005; Richards & Jones, 2008; Sharma & Mehrotra, 2007; Zhang, Baxter, & Glynn, 2013), is important to gain a multifaceted understanding of the OGB phenomenon from the B2B perspective. Such an investigation should also extend existing and add new conceptual boundaries and perspectives of group buying, especially because the traditional approach to group buying in extant B2B literature is that of a buying center, whose goal is to bring together key decision makers (e.g., approvers, buyers) in the buying process for goods and services (Albert, 2003; Brinkmann & Voeth, 2007; Brown, Zablah, Bellenger, & Donthu, 2012; Swani, Brown, & Milne, 2014, Swani, Milne, Brown, Assaf, & Donthu, 2017; Verville & Halingten, 2003). Moreover, despite being a new and innovative business model with bright prospects for fruitful business outcomes, the strategy adopted by one business to promote and sell on OGB websites may not yield the same outcomes for another business. This assumption is based on the premise of contingency theory, which suggests that no one strategy fits all businesses (Heirati, O’Cass, Schoefer, & Siahtiri, 2016; Sok & O’Cass, 2011; Zott & Amit, 2006). Nonetheless, finding the best way to approach business decisions given a certain type of operating environment is possible (Benson-Rea, Brodie, & Sima, 2013; Scott, 2003; Young, Parker, & Charns, 2001), and thus investigation in this direction (i.e., using contingency theory) holds great potential in the pursuit of delivering meaningful recommendations for businesses intending to participate in the OGB business model.