To deal or not to deal? how number of buyers and merchant’s rating impact purchase decisions on deal sites.

Abstract

Deal sites took Singapore by storm when they first entered in 2010. However, the heightened interest in them died as quickly as the hype came about. In order to remain competitive in the industry, management today needs to better understand the factors that trigger purchase intention. While there is much literature on how to better improve consumers' purchase intention on e-commerce sites, deal sites have various different characteristics as compared to the usual e-commerce sites.

Hence, this report focuses on understanding how the number of buyers and presence of merchant rating have an effect on purchase intention depending on the type of deal. Through extensive literature review, survey and in-depth interview, a set of managerial implications is provided to enable deal sites to better work around the effect of the two factors on consumers' purchase intention.