User Acceptance of Groupon Information Technology: An Empirical Analysis

Journal of Network & Information Security 4:4 (2013) 265–273

User Acceptance of Groupon Information Technology: An
                 Empirical Analysis ?

                Yanlin ZHANG ∗,            Hui ZHU, Hongwei LIU, Zan MO
        School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510520, China

Abstract

Groupon is rising as a new kind of Electronic Commerce (EC) model with distinction from traditional
fashion. The groupon sites work as third parties bring online consumers and offline merchants together,
moving forward the promotion through public praise. This paper aims to extend Gefens theory of
Technology Acceptance Model (Trust and TAM in online shopping) to reveal the relationship between
sites, merchants and consumers. In the proposed model, effects of businessman brand and groupon sites,
consumers’ trust and the ability of community message senders are considered. The experiment was
performed by the survey from 208 college students. Results show that businessman brand and groupon
sites quality have positive correlation with the trust of customers. This conclusion will provide decision
support to improve consumers’ willingness to join online groupon for business enterprises.

Keywords: Goupon; Web Site Quality; Businessman Brand

1       Introduction
Since Groupon Co.founded 2008 in Chicago, it launched the new-style model of group-buying,
leading a large number of e-commerce websites to follow it and making this new model go through-
out the world [1]. Only in July in 2010, the visits to groupon websites in China have achieved to
46,258,000, accounting for 19.3% of total visits to shopping sites in a month [2].
  As a newest way to shop online, groupon is a new type of C2B (Consumer to Business) model,
and it is a business activity that a number of people sign up to buy something with a very low
discount together, once they get the information via internet[3].
   There are many researches towards the user technology acceptance and willingness to accept
online shopping [4, 5, 6, 7]. However, the researches in the past only consider consumers trust
towards businessman brand, seldom involves with the third party (that is web site qualities)
[8]. Besides, groupon combine different guests into a group, making it more relative between
    ?
     This work is supported by by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant (NO.70971027,
71171062), Philosophy and Social Science of Guangdong under Grant (NO.GD12CGL12), and Doctors Funding
of Guangdong University of Technology (NO.12ZS0121).
   ∗
     Corresponding author.
     Email address: forestgdut@163.com (Yanlin ZHANG).

2160-9462 / Copyright © 2013 Binary Information Press
September 15, 2013

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customers [9, 10]. It is not clear that how the relationship between consumers interactional affect
compliance intention of groupon. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the reasons, which the qualities
of the websites, the businessman brand and interaction between consumers,affect the willingness
to customers.
  The structure of the paper as follows: firstly we will conclude the essays in the past and
build our study model. Secondly, we will describe the procedure of the research and the data
analysis. Lastly, we will give out the valuable main result, including their meaning and the
valuable significance in the theory and practice field.

2     Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses
2.1    Based model
Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are important factors that user accepts the tech-
nology [6, 7]. Shopping based on line make the consumers do not do trade with them face to face.
Thus, trust is regard as a key point to maintain an ongoing relationship between the parties to
the transaction [5, 11, 12].
   Gefen et al.(2003) is selected because it has a concise structure and is the most commonly
used model in the IT acceptance literatureand many studies have shown that Trust and TAM is
effective. Although the UTAUT include more elements [4], it is not selected for the reasons that
it involves a number of elements, which could make our full model overcomplicatedand does not
help us to express the relationship between the factors [13].
  Group-on not only has the features of common online shopping, but also the unique features of
groupon shopping [14, 15]. Groupon make the consumers get together voluntarily with the same
requirement, for which formed a buyer’s advantage based on bulk purchase to buy the goods with
relative low discount [16].
   Web site quality, which is an asset with premium value, brought to the owner [17]. Its carrier
is a group of the name, term, symbol or other decision used to compete with other products
and work, do affect consumers’ trust. The source of value added is from consumers minds in the
form of impression on their carrier [18]. The famous website is much more reliable than common
website, and the famous brand win more trust [8]. Thus, both the web site qualities and the
brand are related to the willingness to buy.
  Besides, groupon combine different consumers into a group, making it more relative between
customers, interaction between the consumers is displayed by the professional competence of
message senders and the tie strength [19], to affect the compliance intention of groupon [20].
Professional competence referred here is that built in the base of the knowledge on the word-of-
mouth receivers, judged by the receivers’ experience and information about the products. And
the tie strength is described as a natural relationship from strong to weak between consumers
and others [21].
  In conclusion, the research in this paper is focus on the relationship between the trust and
the web site qualities, and the trust and the businessman brand, which affect the willingness to
the consumers. Besides, the professional competence and tie strength of senders between the
consumers will be a quantitative governing between trust and compliance intention of groupon
willingness in the research.

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2.2     Hypotheses Development
2.2.1   Web site quality of groupon and trust

Compare to the tradition productions, Web Site Quality is more based on the brand prestige.
Having a well-known web site brand, the business can actually attract more costumers [8]. A
well-known brand can attract the costumers by giving deeply impression if they are confused
by the too many web sites when they are purchasing by Internet. On the other hand, for the
costumers, the well-known brand can provide more trust to let them feel that this web site can
sent productions on time and provide reliable information security and so on [12, 18]. By the
data statistics of Chinese E-Business Research Centre, the good word-of-mouth marketing, well-
known brand and the large scale decide the market share. So that this article belief that the great
brand can more easily obtain trust and get a large market share. Hence, this research put up the
assumption follow:
  H1: The web site quality is positively related to user’s trust.

2.2.2   Businessman brand and trust

As a combination method of online and offline, in addition to quality of the groupon web site
itself, the businessman brand is also an important factor affecting consumer’s trust and confi-
dence. Especially many different quality in the groupon web site, most costumers judge further to
determine by businessman brand [22] and the great brand in offline can obtain online consumer’s
trust more easily. Hence, this research put up the assumption follow:
  H2: The businessman brand is positively related to user’s trust.

2.2.3   Tie strength have a regulating relationship between trust and compliance
        intention of groupon

Many researches confirm that the one that have higher tie strength provide better information
dissemination effect than the lower one [21]. The tie strength between information senders and
receivers decide the effect. When the receivers belief the senders have aver all character (high
tie strength), information have a better effect in persuading [23]. Then, in the high tie strength
condition, information can be more easily to accept and have a larger influence so that enriching
the understanding of this brand and reducing the risk of groupon. Hence, this research put up
the assumption follow:
  H3: Tie strength positively moderates (reinforces) the positive relationship between trust and
intentions to groupon.

2.2.4   Professional competence of information senders have a regulating relationship
        between trust and compliance intention of groupon

In the research, the information from someone with professional competence will play a role part
in select what to buy [21]. More professional this type of person is, the more information wants
to obtain from them and the dependency of word-of-mouth will increase, too. If the source of the
information is opinion leader, the influence will be more large [24]. Therefore, the professional

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competence has a positive effect on influence and the trust for costumers to buy productions.
Hence, this research put up the assumption follow:
  H4: The professional competence of information senders positively moderates the positive re-
lationship between trust and intentions to groupon.
    Having described the proposed research model, Figure 1 provides a graphical presentation.

                         Fig.1 Research Model and Proposed Hypotheses

3      Research Method
A survey instrument was developed to test the research model. We drew a representative sample
of Chinese Groupon users and conducted a survey.

3.1     Measures
We used validated scales to measure the constructs of the proposed model, with the wording of
the items adapted to the groupon context. Eight re?ective constructs were measured in this study.
The scales of groupon intention, trust, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, both of
which contained four items, were adapted from a study of Gefen et al. (2003), which were adapted
from Davis (1989). Web site qualitywhich adapted from Sultan et al (2002); Larson(1992). Busi-
nessman brand, which adapted from Erdem and Swait(1998); Grewal et al. (1998). Tie Strength,
which adapted from Brown and Reingen (1987). Professional competence, which adapted from
MitchellBoustani (1994).
  The questionnaires mainly use five-point Likert semantic differential scale, and options of the
questionnaire range from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.

3.2     Data Collection
Collects data by questionnaire and mainly study for the groupon web sites in China while the
object of study is ones who have ever purchased by groupon, most of them are the students

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of university. We chose college students as object of study because, according to iResearch
Consulting released the “China Buying Online Market Research Report” shows that groupon
site user to focus more on office workers and college students, and the share of the proportion
of nearly 50%. Therefore, groupon became the main costume way of university students, so the
college students as the survey sample to a certain extent, can be representative of the population.
  An English questionnaire was developed and translated it into Chinese. Following the con-
ventional back-translation method [25], we asked a translator who was unaware of the research
context to translate the Chinese version back into English. The two English questionnaires were
compared and changes were made to ensure that the Chinese version was equivalent to the original
English questionnaire [13].
  The collecting time of the questionnaires is from 10th April to 10th May in 2011. Of the
250 questionnaires distributed, 208 questionnaires were completed and usable for data analysis,
showing an effective response rate of 83%.
  In perspective of the way to obtain information, the search engines accounted for 41.35%,
indicating that most of the consumers prefer to rely on searching goods by search engines, other
way of community information sharing, accounted for 36.06%, indicating that most consumers
will share product information with others. What’s more, most costumers’ select LaShou.com,
and MeiTuan.com, and people are likely to choose food commodities on the groupon web site.

4       Data Analysis and Results
We used partial least squares (PLS) to test the research model and the structural relationships
proposed in Figure 1. PLS employs a component-based approach for model estimation, and is
not highly demanding on sample size and residual distribution [26]. SmartPLS 2.0 was chosen
because of its robustness with regard to assumptions and requirements for data analysis [27].

4.1     Measurement reliability and validity
We estimated the quality of our measurement models with composite reliability and both con-
vergent and discriminant validity.

4.1.1    Composite reliability

The reliability of the measurements was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha and the composite
reliability scores. The reliability scores of all of the principal constructs are considered adequate
as they exceed 0.72, well above the recommended cutoff of 0.70 [28].

4.1.2    Convergent and discriminant validity

The convergent and discriminant validity of the measurements were con?rmed by three tests.
First, the square root of the average variance extracted (AVE) of each construct is much larger
than all cross-correlations between the construct and other constructs [26]. Second, all AVEs
are well above 0.50, which suggests that the principal constructs capture much higher construct-
related variance than error variance [29]. Third, the correlations among all of the constructs are

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well below the 0.90 threshold, suggesting that the constructs are distinct from each other [30].
Jointly, these tests suggest adequate convergent and discriminant validity of the measurements
[13].

                             Table 1: Construct Reliability, AVE, and Correlations
                             Cronbach’s   Composite
 Construct                                               1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8
                                alpha     reliability

 1.Professional Competence      0.77         0.87       0.83
 2.Trust                        0.78         0.83       0.30   0.79
 3.Tie Strength                 0.90         0.93       0.48   0.25   0.85
 4.Businessman brand            0.81         0.86       0.48   0.30   0.38   0.72
 5.Intention of groupon         0.90         0.85       0.44   0.37   0.37   0.32   0.81
 6.perceived ease of use        0.72         0.85       0.47   0.40   0.32   0.37   0.42   0.78
 7.perceived usefulness         0.74         0.82       0.37   0.45   0.30   0.43   0.38   0.43   0.79
 8.Web site quality             0.76         0.85       0.28   0.25   0.15   0.48   0.33   0.27   0.24   0.77
Notes: The diagonal elements (in bold) are square roots of AVE.

4.2        Structural model test and results
The result is running out from the Smart PLS structured mode in Figure 2. The study indicates
that the strength rate of whole mode result is 0.37. Figure 2 shows the evaluation results of

                                    Fig.2 PLS Results of Structural Model

the full search model. This model accounts for 37.3% of the variance in compliance intention of
groupon, which is 23.3% more than that explained by the base model. Tie strength and profes-
sional competence of information senders both have insignificant paths to compliance intention
of grouponfailing to support H3 and H4. Hypotheses H1 and H2 are supported because the
paths from Web site quality and Businessman brand to trust have significant coefficient. This
shows that the site quality indirectly affected compliance intention of groupon by the perception
of trustand businessman brand also indirectly affected compliance intention of groupon by the
perception of trust.

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5     Discussion
5.1    Key findings and contributions
Based on the model of Gefen et al., (2003), this essay put forward the groupon acceptance model
and conducts a questionnaire survey .The Conclusions are as follows:
  Conclusion 1: The more highly perceive the web site quality, the more faith will customers have
in group purchase. Therefore, cooperating with popular groupon websites helps to increase sales
and strengthen customers’ willness to group purchase.
  Conclusion 2: If the brands get much more recognition, customers will have more confidence in
their group-purchasing activities. It means the great brand in offline can obtain online consumer’s
trust more easily.
   H3 and H4 may be due to the limitations of the participants involved. Most of them just
participate in group purchase once time and really don’t know whether the relation strength and
information sender’s abilities can help. What’s more, the lack of questionnaires will also change
the results. Meantime, it illustrates that customer’s trust is crucial to group purchase since the
tie strength and professional competence of information sender have little influence on customer’s
trust and their choice.

5.2    Implications for theory and research
This paper aims to delineate a theory for technology acceptance model, using Gefen et al., (2003)
as its basic theory, and combining with the three characteristics of groupon website, businessman
brand and groupon consumers, put forward that the website quality and offline businessman
brand can affect the consumers’ perception trust. Besides, combining with interaction between
the consumers, put forward that tie strength and professional competence of information sender
have a positive regulation to consumers’ trust. Empirical results show that groupon web site
quality and offline businessman brand have positive impact on the consumers’ willingness, and
provide some significance to the development of groupon.

5.3    Limitations and future research
This study has some values in theoretic and practical aspects, however, the study has some
disadvantages due to various reasons, such as shortness in time, energy, studying environment,
which limited this article. Thus, we need to do further research to form a more convincing system;
some advices and solutions are simply summarized as follows:
  (1)In the perspective of the object and scope in this study, this investigation is mainly base on
customers who are in school because of conditions and time constraints, which leads to a problem
in a sample survey, the amount and scope of those students consumers are certain restrictions,
so the result of investigation may not be representative of the overall situation of the groupon
industry.
  (2) In this study, although both tie strength and professional competence of information senders
have insignificant impact to compliance intention of groupon, in reality, we discover that the tie
strength and professional competence of information senders do exactly influence group purchase.

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We need to conduct a further investigation in the future.

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