Group Buying Web Sites business: Model analysis and evaluation of Greek cases Retzepi Nikoleta Supervisor: MSc in ICT Systems – October 2011

Basic Fundamentals E-commerce: involves the transaction of buying and selling products through the Internet –Social shopping: involves the use of social and online media Shopping communities Social shopping marketplaces Recommendation engines Shared shopping mechanisms Group buying sites Deal Aggregators: web sites that gather Web content from different online sources

Historical Review 2000→Mercata, “We Commerce” 2005→Tuangoo China had over 1,215 group-buying sites by the end of August 2010 Online group buying model also gains popularity in other Asian countries November 2008→Groupon Spring 2010 →Appearance of Greek Social Buying sites

Dissertation Goals Extraction of certain statistical information about Greek social buying sites The proportion of sites that sell a certain product The percentage of sites that use certain payment methods The percentage of sites that operate in certain cities The proportion of sites that offer a gift to their members for inviting new friends The max and min discount that each site have ever offered The max and min price that each site have ever offered The alexa Greek and global rank for those sites

Dissertation Goals Find out hidden relationships among various factors of group buying sites’ way of operation between the discounts that each site offers with the population of each site, shown by Alexa rank between the prices that each site offers with the population of each site, shown by Alexa rank between the number of sales of a certain product with the discount between the number of sales of a certain product with the price at which this product is offered

Research Methodology & Contribution Recording of the Greek deal of the day sites –It was really difficult to achieve a complete recording –many new sites have been emerged until now Thorough examination of some Greek group buying deal aggregators Soby.gr Oladeals.gr Dealissimo.gr Bonusdeals.gr, kerdizo.gr

Research Methodology & Contribution Examination of certain aspects of each and every one of those sites separately Kind of offers Payment methods Area of operation Creation of a database file (using MS excel) Each registration (line) of the excel sheet comprises important information about a particular social buying site There has been some information retrieved from Alexa.com In a separate file additional details have been recorded according to each site’s offers on a specific day(Monday, 5/9/2011)

Research Methodology & Contribution Insertion of data to the statistic program SPSS 19 Extraction of useful assumptions such as graphs and histograms that describe some statistical facts of the way those sites operate Implementation of Regression Analysis to identify hidden relationships

Results The main percentage of the sites include offers about beauty care, spas, travelling and food Much fewer percentage of them offers deals about education or cultural events Most of the sites provide deals in Athens, fewer in Thessaloniki and almost 50% in other cities Most of the sites allow their clients to use credit cards at their transactions. Few of them allow using bank deposit while only 40% accept the usage of Paypal Only a small percentage reward their customers for inviting friends

Results Using regression analysis, it has been identified that: Maximum discount and Alexa Greek rank are associated with each other at a great extend The analysis of the remaining pairs of variables by using linear regression, does not indicate any significant relationship between them, although according to common sense, there should be a certain correlation.

Conclusions The evolution of Group Buying business model in Greece is immense For Greek businesses, group buying is a way of becoming prosperous despite the financial crisis For Greek customers, this business model enables them to continue shopping, despite the fact that their buying power has been reduced by the crisis Future aspects Emphasis on location-based group buying deals More spontaneous, real-time offers 11

Thank you! A&Q 12