A study of the effect of social shopping deals on online reviews
| Pages | 2227-2240 |
| Date | 04 December 2017 |
| Published date | 04 December 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-09-2016-0378 |
| Author | In Lee |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
A study of the effect of social
shopping deals on online reviews
In Lee
Department of Computer Sciences, Western Illinois University,
Macomb, Illinois, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate social shopping deals and their impacts on review
metrics at an online review site, Yelp and to compare the review metrics of the restaurant businesses and the
health and wellness businesses to understand how social shopping deals affects them.
Design/methodology/approach –This study adopts a multiple regression model to analyse the effect of
seven independent variables on the dependent variable, the growth rate of reviews which is a proxy of sales
growth. This sample consisted of the review data of 134 merchants which offered social shopping deals at
Groupon in 2011. The online review data of these merchants were collected in 2015 to analyse the relationship
between the deals and the grow rate of the reviews.
Findings –For the restaurant businesses, there is a positive persuasive effect of Groupon customers’review
score on the growth rate of the reviews and consequently on the sale growth. For the health and wellness
businesses, there are a positive persuasive effect of the regular customers’review score on the growth rate of
the reviews and a negative awareness effect of the number of Groupon reviews on the growth rate of the
reviews. The review data also show that the Groupon customers of the health and wellness businesses are
three times more likely to post their reviews than those of the restaurant businesses.
Research limitations/implications –First, while the author limited the study to the seven independent
variables, additional variables may exist. These additional variables may also influence the number of
reviews, too. Future research needs to identify such variables to build a comprehensive model. Second, future
research needs to address other types of businesses, such as education and entertainment, and compare
differences between them. Third, while the study focussed on the review score and the number of reviews,
a more in-depth analysis of the comments using sentiment analysis and social network analysis may shed
additional insights on their review activities.
Originality/value –Despite the potential significance of customers’reviews about social shopping deals, the
critical mass of empirical studies still lacks in this area. The study contributes to the literature of this field by
investigating the effect of social shopping deals on the customers’online reviews. This study provides
practical guidance for the improvement of online reviews about social shopping deals.
Keywords Groupon, Online review, Social shopping, Social shopping deal
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Social shopping has been on the rapid increase. Social shopping combines product/service
sales with consumer participation in a social network environment with a synergistic
relationship between social networks, consumers, and local merchants (Lee et al., 2015).
Among various social shopping revenue sources, social shopping deals have become the
main revenue source for social shopping sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial.
Social shopping sites depend heavily on social media to inform consumers about social
shopping deals and solicit purchasers who have similar interests in products and services.
Due to the experience-based immediacy of typical social shopping deals, customers are
mostly local to the regions where the merchants are doing businesses. An increasing
number of merchants are rapidly adopting innovations such as social shopping deals to
better serve customers, improve productivity, extend market base, and stay competitive
(Kim et al., 2013). However, studies on the effectiveness of social shopping deals for
merchants are scarce (Kumar and Rajan, 2012).
As more and more merchants offer products/services on social shopping sites, online
review sites will also draw the attention of the potential customers of social shopping deals,
since many of these customers are first-time deal purchasers. In the absence of experience
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 117 No. 10, 2017
pp. 2227-2240
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-09-2016-0378
Received 17 September 2016
Revised 24 January 2017
Accepted 28 February 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
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Social
shopping deals
on online
reviews
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