The effect of sustainability on customers’ intention to buy from an online group-buying website

Abstract

Online group buying emerged as one of the most successful online business models. Online group buying refers to the online buying community's purchase of products and services significantly reduced from the regular retail price. According to previous studies, many factors can affect purchase intention on such a platform. This study developed a model that explains the factors influencing purchase intention in an online group buying website, it also proposed a model to study online group buying sustainability from the customer perspective. It considers the impact of sustainability dimensions, customer satisfaction, and website quality on customers' intention to buy. This study examines three dimensions of social, economic, and environmental factors on customers' intention to buy from online group buying websites for the first time. This study also addressed the related relationship between the sustainability dimensions in such a platform. The results show that each social, economic, and environmental dimension positively affects customer satisfaction. Moreover, the sustainability dimensions positively influence the purchase intention, while the environmental dimension has less impact, and the studied online group buying customers pay less attention to it, also, the satisfaction and quality of the website affect the purchase intention.

Keywords

• online group-buying
• purchase intention
• sustainability
• satisfaction
• website quality