RRL DRAFT & TOPICS

Online group buying 1

Online group buying has become popular with the emergence of US-based sites such as
Groupon, launched in 2008. The term group shopping refers to social or collective buying where
items can be purchased at significantly reduced prices when enough buyers participate in the
purchase. The transaction proceeds only when the required number of buyers is reached.
Significant savings can be made (CTVglobemedia, 2011) by purchasing more products together
to reduce the price. This popular trend in online shopping experienced significant growth during
2010 and 2011. In the United States and Europe, online group buying is highly popular and
successful, and is based on a simple but powerful concept: consumers enjoy receiving significant
discounts on premium products, although merchants are only willing to provide these discounts if
they can sell high quantities (Pressitt, 2010). A CNN report in 2010 indicated that this concept has
motivated a new category of ‘‘group buying’’ websites, at least one of which may be valued at
more than US$1 billion. In Canada, local merchants offer their services at a discount of between
30% and 90%. Online group buying websites are also experiencing rapid growth in Asia (CNN,
2010). In China, more than 1215 group buying sites have been launched and the total transaction
value of the Groupon-type market is projected to reach RMB$980 million (US$147.6 million).
This market is expected to grow by an annual average of 57% over the next 3 years
(NetworkWorld, 2010). Online group buying in Taiwan has also become increasingly popular.
Shoppers are using online group buying primarily because of incentives to save money. Taiwan’s
largest bulletin broad system site, PTT (http://ppt.cc), and Ihergo website
(http://www.ihergo.com/) are the most popular group buying websites. The revenue of one
renowned group buying website increased from NT$13 million in 2008 August to NT$27 million
at the end of 2008, and an average of more than 700 new groups are established everyday (Taipei
Times, 2010).
Impulsive buying behavior 2

After the sustained love affair of researchers in defining and redefining impulsive buying
behavior (Bellengeretal.,1978;Kollat and Willet,1967;Stern,1962), the focus gradually shifted
from the ‘what’ of impulsive buying to the ‘why’ and then to the ‘how’ of it. From taxonomical to
cognitive (Hoch andLoewenstein,1991; Rook and Fisher,1995) and finally somewhat to trait-
oriented approach (Bratkoetal.,2013), the impulsive buying literature has been witnessing both
horizontal as well as vertical surge. Needless to point out, that on one hand, there have been a
plethora of studies across the globe trying to assess the impact of situational (Belk,1975;
Chavoshetal.,2011;Foroughietal.,2012) and marketing driven
factors(Stern,1962;KarbasivarandYarahmadi,2011;Lifu,2012; Mehta andChugan,2013); while on
the other hand, new theoretical model sand frameworks have continuously been developed. How-
ever, still huge gaps exist with respect to developing understanding related to psychological
aspects of the phenomenon, and one such literature gap is the overlooking of simultaneous impact
of intrinsic factors on impulsive buying behavior.

Mobile online food ordering apps 3

Given the rapid development of information communication technology (ICT) and

smartphones, smart technologies and mobile application (app) software have become an extensive
and integral part of everyday life (Baabdullah, Alalwan, Rana, Patil, & Dwivedi, 2019; Dwivedi,
Shareef, Simintiras, Lal, & Weerakkody, 2016; Lal & Dwivedi, 2009; Lu, Wu, & Hsiao, 2019;
Malaquias & Hwang, 2019; Shareef, Archer, & Dwivedi, 2012; Shareef, Kumar, Dwivedi, &
Kumar, 2016; Ismagilova, Hughes, Dwivedi, & Raman, 2019). Mobile apps are built and designed
to be downloaded and used via smartphones or similar mobile platforms (e.g., iPads, tablets). In
the first quarter of 2017, the number of apps globally available to be downloaded was about 2.2
million for Apple’s App Store and 2.8 million for Google’s Play Store (Statista, 2018a), and users
had downloaded more than 178.1 billion apps on their mobile devices by 2017, a figure that is
predicted to increase to 258.2 billion by 2022 (Statista, 2018b). Among the most popular mobile
apps that have recently been developed by service organizations in Jordan are mobile online food
ordering apps (MFOAs). For example, 718 Jordanian restaurants had joined the Talabat MFOA
and had started taking orders from customers in Amman by the end of 2018 (Talabat, 2017).
Jordanian restaurants have started to consider mobile commerce applications as new mechanisms
either to attract new customers or to maintain current customers’ satisfaction and loyalty,
especially given the intense competition in a sector that comprises more than 20,000 restaurants
(Almadenahnews, 2018). Furthermore, the development of interactive technologies has led to
customers being more active and engaged in different commercial activities, such as gathering
information, comparing alternatives, purchasing, and providing reviews (Carlson, Rahman,
Taylor, & Voola, 2019; Thakur, 2016; Yang, Lin, Carlson, & Ross, 2016; Yang, Asaad, &
Dwivedi, 2017). Consequently, Jordanian restaurants are looking to build their brand recognition
and equity through these apps (Hew, Lee, Ooi, & Lin, 2016).

Online shopping 4

Online shopping is said to be the third most popular activity on the internet after email
using and web browsing (UCLA communication policy, 2001). In 2016, global online shopping
was of $1.9 trillion and projection has shown a growth of up to $4.06 trillion by 2020 (statista).
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, online consumers will
grow to 1.623 billion in 2018 from 1.079 billion in 2013. Other than the expansion of internet, the
rise in smart phone penetration rate, mobile phone internet, trust, easier payment system (Neilson,
2017) all has contributed to this growth.

However, though online shopping behavior has become a common trend of shopping
among developed countries (Particularly European and North American countries), developing
world is still lacking behind. UTCTAD has found that in 2013, digital buyers represented less than
15 percent of the population in Asia and Oceania, as compared with 60 percent in North America
and 49 percent in Western Europe. However, this scenario is expected to change by near future. In
2017, China has achieved the highest online shopping penetration rate (statista).

Nevertheless, Bangladesh is also progressing towards having a digitally connected nation

which ultimately helps nationals to become more prone to internet usage. Google research paper
titled “Research Insights: Emerging Trends as Bangladesh Goes Digital” found that people spend
Tk 7,594.10 annually for online shopping (Azad, 2017). According to e-cab, more than 700 e-
commerce websites are selling their products on their website or on Facebook page and this
number continues to grow (expo.gov, 2017). But only 23% of the internet users which is only 2%
of the total population shop online (B2C UNCTAD eCommerce Index-2016). Besides,
contribution of eCommerce to real GDP is less than 1 percent. However, with the internet
penetration 38.5% in (BTRC, 2016), the market for online shopping grew by 15% to 20% in 2014
(Jahangir Shah, Prothom Alo, 2014). Thus, with proper influence internet users can be turned into
potential online shoppers.

E-commerce 5

The E-commerce nowadays has evolved business environment from real market to digital
market. Besides the established E-commerce, companies are now focusing on new emerging
internet marketing strategy in which through the mobile devices (i.e. smartphone and tablet) called
as mobile commerce (m-commerce).

Based on the study carried out in getting information for this research, the rise over the
internet usage has resulted in the introduction of online shopping. Furthermore, better and cheaper
online shopping cost has also become a factor to spur e-commerce activities in Malaysia. More
Malaysian nowadays have good feeling and feel comfortable with shopping on mobile devices and
at the same time finding a smarter way to get the best value for their money. Furthermore, from
the research carried out, it has been identified that people particularly Malaysian are much likely
to shop online due to the time constraints they face for their daily activities as well as other possible
cost from shopping activities such as fuel and parking fee (Lim W.M, 2015).

Mobile Marketing 6

Mobile marketing can be used to build customer engage-ment with a brand, through text
messages, mobile advertising, permission-based marketing, the delivery of mobile content, user-
generated content, and mobile commerce. However, mobile technology presents companies with
challenges as well as opportunities. In particular, earlier studies in the pre-smart phone era,where
the main means of marketing communication was via text or SMS messages have shown that
consumers perceive mobile marketing communications to be variously irritating (Muk, 2007),an
invasion of privacy (Windham and Orton, 2002) and intrusive(Monk, Carroll, Parker, & Blythe,
2004). This, in turn, calls into ques-tion their effectiveness as a marketing channel (Grant &
O’Donohoe,2007). This has led some commentators to suggest that the wayforward is through the
adoption of permission based marketing, in which, for example, customers have control over the
number and type of messages (Blomqvist, Hurmelinna, & Seppanen, 2005)or over the timing,
location, and information content of messages(Stewart & Pavlou, 2002; Watson, Pitt, Berthon, &
Zinkhan, 2002).

Online Trust 7

Establishing online trust is a challenge faced by the vast majority of online vendors,
especially by those with newly established websites or do not enjoy a brand reputation (Pengnate
and Sarathy, 2017). For such vendors, the website is the primary means by which online consumers
evaluate whether or not to engage or conduct business with the vendor. Consequently, vendors
attempt diverse mechanisms on their websites to convince first-time consumers of their
trustworthiness and enhance consumers’ purchase intention. Two such mechanisms are vendor-
specific guarantees and customer reviews. Vendor specific guarantees refer to the privacy policies,
product warranty policies, product return policies and other customer service policies by online
vendors and are legally binding mechanisms, whereas the customer reviews of vendors are peer-
generated vendor evaluations posted on company websites and are market driven. Even though
researchers and practitioners have proposed vendor-specific guarantees and customer reviews for
engendering trust in various e-commerce environments (e.g., Pavlou and Gefen, 2004; Utz et al.,
2012), the way they build initial trust and subsequently consumers’ intent to buy from unfamiliar
online vendors are still not well understood (Kim and Peterson, 2017).

Online Purchasing and Behavior 8

There is a growing need for new knowledge, theories and models of Internet consumer
behaviour due to the evolution of electronic commerce as it becomes a vital aspect of customer
relations and marketing strategy (Close and Kukar-Kinney, 2010). The online purchasing
behaviour needs to be further understood (Herrero and San Martin, 2012) hence, it attracts
increasing research attention (Mosteller et al., 2014). As several studies have pinpointed, the key
to long-term success for e-retailers is to build consumer trust (Suh and Han, 2003; Pavlou and
Fygenson, 2006; Vos et al., 2014), but the latter is negatively influenced by the perceived risks
(Hong and Cha, 2013; Kamarulzaman, 2007) associated with both products (Ward and Lee, 2000)
and web-vendors (Jiang et al., 2008). Thus, it is important to examine the risk factors affecting
trust in Internet shopping, whilst the purchasing intentions of online consumers need to be further
investigated.

Online Group Buying 9

Online group buying (OGB), a business model that aggregates buyers’ power, allowing
them to obtain lower prices (Zhang et al., 2015), has become popular among consumers since its
introduction in the United States (US). Groupon mode OGB websites were launched in many
countries and have been widely accepted by consumers worldwide, particularly in Asian countries.
A recent report by the China Network Information Centre (2016) shows that the number of users
in the OGB market in China reached 180.22 million by the end of 2015 and that 26.6% of netizens
have experience in using OGB. Commercial website managers have noticed the growing trend
toward OGB in China and created thousands of similar OGB websites, intensifying the
competition in this industry. While a few OGB websites have succeeded in the market, a large
number have failed and exited this e-marketplace, resulting in a mortality rate of more than 70%.
Consequently, how to retain existing buyers and attract potential consumers becomes the top
priority for OGB vendors. Understanding consumer needs and offering corresponding marketing
strategies to fulfill these needs have always been cited as the key to business success (Delafrooz
et al., 2009).

Gender differences in online shopping 10

Although the number of Internet users is equally divided among the genders, more men
than women engage in online shopping and make online purchases (Rodgers & Harris, 2003). This
gender gap in online shopping drew attention to the role of gender in online shopping and factors
that affect men’s and women’s intention to buy online (Rodgers & Harris, 2003; Sanchez-Franco,
2006; Van Slyke, Comunale, & Belanger, 2002). Gender difference in online shopping have been
examined from various perspectives such as perceived risk of online buying (Garbarino &
Strahilevitze, 2004), website usability and design (Cyr & Bonanni, 2005), and technology
acceptance (Chen, Gillenson, & Sherrell, 2002; Porter & Donthu, 2006; Sanchez-Franco, 2006).
While studies of online shopping attitude are widespread in the literature, studies of gender
differences in online shopping attitude are scarce and reported findings are inconsistent (Cyr &
Bonanni, 2005; Dittmar, Long, & Meek, 2004). An extensive review of online shopping literature
by Chang, Cheung, and Lai (2005) shows that more men than women buying online in some
studies and no significant gender differences in online shopping behavior between the genders in
other studies. Likewise, a more recent review by Zhou, Dai, and Zhang (2007) demonstrates
conflicting findings pertaining to the impact of gender on online shopping activities. Thus, gender
differences in online shopping attitude deserve more attention

and better understanding.

Factors that influence online shopping behaviours 11

As a matter of fact, e-commerce in Malaysia is still evolving from the current prototype
and it is important to address the factors that influence online shopping behaviors. The changes of
consumer behavior that over the decade has reigned the retailers dig into the psychology of the
virtual consumers. The difficulty of decoding the online consumer behavior is complicated by zero
physical interaction during the transactions. (Jiang, Chen, & Wang, 2008; Mukherjee & Nath,
2007). Huge investment to grasp virtual consumers has induced the online sellers to go no further
towards the understanding of consumer behavior. Although both government and private sectors
have put in much efforts to prosper the virtual shopping platform, traditional store remains as the
instinctive choice for majority of consumers. (Ramayah & Ignatius, 2005). A related study by
IPSOS Open Thinking Exchange (2012) found that 56 percent of the respondents from 24
countries prefer to shop in a traditional store rather than an online store (Marketing Charts, 2012).
Even in developed countries such as United States, out of 63 percent of the consumers would make
a survey on the internet before proceed to purchase traditional consumer electronics online, but
only half of the consumers will truly purchase online (NPD Group, 2011). The reluctance to change
behavior and culture-bounded are the other factors that prevent Malaysian to embrace online
shopping (Harn, Khatibi, & Ismail, 2006; Jamil & Mat, 2011). Hofstede (2012) claimed that
Malaysia has a low score of 41 percent in pragmatism dimension indicating Malaysian has a
normative culture. The consumers tend to listen to verbal recommendations from close families
and relatives, friends or even media before making a shopping decision. Therefore, to change the
Malaysian consumers’ perception to e-store, online retailers need to maximize efforts in doing
promotion and performing good customer services in order to raise their interest in online
shopping. A study by Rakuten (2010) found that 71 percent of Malaysian online shoppers tend to
regret their online purchases, 48 percent were dissatisfied due to mismatched expectations, 29
percent were disappointed with the poor product quality and 30 percent of Malaysians failed to
complete their online purchases. The consumers also consider it a hassle when they faced difficulty
to log in into the account, product information provided are limited and difficult to reach the online
retailers by phone (Oracle, 2011). Online retailers need to design their website in such a way to
make them user-friendly and actively manage the social media marketing to channel traffic to their
online website.

Changes in behavior of consumers in the Internet market 12

The analysis of consumer behavior is a key aspect for the success of an e-business.
However, the behavior of consumers in the Internet market changes as they acquire e-purchasing
experience (Gefen et al., 2003; Yu et al., 2005). The perceptions which induce them to make an
initial e-purchase may have different effects on their subsequent decisions or repurchasing
behavior because the use of the information technology (IT) maymodify certain perceptions and
attitudes (Thompson et al., 1994; Taylor and Todd, 1995; Gefen et al., 2003). Despite these
differences, very little research carried out in the e-commerce field has conducted a separate
analysis of the perceptions related to the adoption and to the “post-adoption” decisions (Karahanna
et al., 1999; Vijayasarathy, 2004). Moreover, hardly any researchers have analyzed the behavior
of e-customers as they gain experience (as Taylor and Todd, 1995; Vijayasarathy, 2004 state).
Most studies have considered that the low level of development of this new channel meant that the
differences between the twodecisionswere not yet significant, and their principal objective was,
therefore, to determine the perceptions which led consumers to adopt the Internet as an alternative
shopping channel to the offline market (Chen et al., 2002; Verhagen et al., 2006). Nevertheless,
the growth of e-commerce has made it clear that customer behavior has evolved. As in other types
of purchase situations (Sheth, 1968; Heilman et al., 2000), customer behavior does not necessarily
remain stable over time since the experience acquired from past purchases means that perceptions
change (Taylor and Todd, 1995; Yu et al., 2005). When customers repeat their behavior several
times, they feel more and more in control and form favorable intentions about purchasing (Liao et
al., 2006). Likewise, e-purchases allow the customers to become more familiar with the Internet
as a shopping channel, to value some aspects of the shopping process more highly and to ignore
certain characteristics that may have been important in the early stages.

Impulse Buying 13

In contrast to the belief that impulse buying is a recent concept, the studies related to
impulse buying started in the 1950s. Studies conducted during this period defined impulse buying
as “unplanned” purchases and designed within this framework. But Dennis Rook (1987) points
out that impulse buying implies a narrower and more specific range of phenomena than unplanned
purchasing does. He states that; “impulse buying occurs when consumers experience sudden,
generally powerful and persistent urge to buy something immediately”. According to Sharma et
al. (2010) impulse buying is a sudden, hedonically complex purchase behavior in which the
rapidity of the impulse purchase precludes any thoughtful, deliberate consideration of alternative
or future implications. Consistent with the stated definitions above, Beatty&Ferrell (1998) have
provided a more extensive definition stating that impulse buying is considered to be a sudden and
immediate purchase with no pre-shopping intentions either to buy the specific product category or
fulfill a specific buying task.

On the other hand, as a result of the improvements and innovations in the information
technologies more and more people are using online shopping. According to Dittmar et al. (2004)
the nature of online transactions causes many consumers to overspend because the remote process
does not really feel like spending money. This is very important for firms and organizations
because they are trying to find ways to motivate individuals to spend or buy more and more. One
of the ways firms use in this context is to motivate consumers’ online impulsiveness. Since impulse
purchasing occurs in about 40% of online expenditures (Verhagen & van Dolen ,2011) it is
necessary to examine the subject and its drivers in more detail.
Informational social influence 14

Consumer theorists have long recognized the influence that friends and reference groups
have on consumer decision making. Prospective online shoppers can easily access large volumes
of information about a particular topic from those who have recent experience with it. This is a
special type of social influence: informational social influence, which involves accepting
information or advice from a person who may not have previously been known as a friend or
colleague. Informational social influence is especially important when a consumer is faced with
time constraints, possesses limited knowledge, perceives high risk in the action, or simply lacks
interest in making the decision alone. Given the perceived risk involved in online shopping, we
believed that prospective online shoppers will ask the opinion of their friends or online consumer
groups before they make an online purchase decision. While informational social influence could
be positive (successful cases) or negative (bad experiences), we focused on positive informational
social influence in our study, because we were interested in facilitating online shopping.

Electronic word of mouth 15

In the Internet era, consumers increasingly look for information about products and
services online to enhance their purchase decision process (Alalwan, 2018; Dwivedi et al., 2015;
Lee et al., 2008; Shareef et al., 2017; Shiau et al., 2018). Consumers who used advertising
communications and professional advice a few years ago, now more often use recommendations
provided by other online consumers (Lee et al., 2008; Misirlis and Vlachopoulou, 2018;
Purnawirawan et al., 2015; Shareef et al., 2018). Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is defined as
“the dynamic and on-going information exchange process between potential, actual, or former
customers regarding a product, service, brand or company, which is available to a multitude of
people and institutions via the Internet” (Ismagilova et al., 2017, p.18). eWOM communications
about products and services work as a form of free ‘sales assistance’ (Chen and Xie, 2008; Kamboj
et al., 2018; Purnawirawan et al., 2015), which help consumers to learn about products/services
(Book et al., 2018; Lee and Hong, 2016; Kapoor et al., 2018; Pacauskas et al., 2018) and reduce
uncertainty while making a purchase decision (Reimer and Benkenstein, 2016a; Shaikh et al.,
2018).

While traditional face-to-face word of mouth (WOM) communications mostly happen

between sender and receiver with significant tie strength, eWOM usually occurs in indirect and
public communications between people with weak social ties (Chu et al., 2018; Godes and
Mayzlin, 2004; Hennig‐Thurau et al., 2004; Shiau et al., 2017). Thus, consumers can have some
difficulty when assessing reliability of recommendation source (Smith et al., 2007; Xiang et al.,
2015). Previous research found that credibility plays an important role for valuation of eWOM
message (Alalwan et al., 2017; Chang and Wu, 2014; Munzel, 2016; Teng et al., 2017; Ukpabi
and Karjaluoto, 2018; Yan et al., 2018). When searching for information on products and services
online, consumers can be faced with a high volume of eWOM communications. Source credibility
is one factor readers can use to navigate through these eWOM communications (Dou et al., 2012;
Metzger et al., 2010). The receiver of eWOM communications is more likely to consider them in
their decision-making process if they perceive them as credible (Aladwani and Dwivedi, 2018;
Wathen and Burkell, 2002).