Factors influencing the adoption of online group-buying in virtual community

In the past few years, virtual communities have greatly changed and influenced the way Internet users interact and exchange ideas. It not only offers amusement and enriches social relationship, but also changes people's daily habits. In the case of online retailing, the emergence of online group-buying is regarded as one of the popular and burgeoning shopping models. This works through an initiator who issues the group-buying message to members with the same demand for a specific product. In this way, it can enhance the bargaining power with the producer through bulk-buying to achieve the goal of price-cutting. In this study, we proposed a conceptual model to discuss constructs which influence online group-buying behaviors. These constructs include perceived interactivity, initiator's trust, perceived risk, word-of-mouth, and group-buying behavior intention. In the sample part, 134 valid participants with online-purchasing experiences were collected through online survey method. The conceptual model was conducted by structural equation modeling (SEM) method through SmartPLS 2.0 software to test the hypotheses proposed in this study. The results indicated that (1) perceived interactivity positively influenced the initiator's trust, (2) initiator's trust positively influenced group-buying behavior, (3) initiator's trust influence the perceived risk negatively; (4) word-of-mouth positively impacted group-buying behavior; and (5) perceived risk negatively impact on group-buying behavior. Overall, the results showed a good fit for the proposed model and provided the fine predictive and explanatory power on group-buying behavior of a virtual community.