Consumers’ motivations and daily deal promotions

Abstract

In the last years daily deal (dd) sites have become a substantial part of e-commerce scenario. Every day, for a limited time, such sites offer their subscribers, at very discounted prices, deals for products or services. Despite the worldwide success of daily deal sites, testified by articles in newspapers and magazines, there is an almost complete absence of academic research on this topic. The aim of this paper is to understand the consumers' drivers in online coupon buying. The study is exploratory in nature and authors have collected data by carrying out four synchronous online focus groups involving 21 participants and investigating five areas: level of awareness, perception area, social dimension, consumer behavior, and relationship with e-commerce. Respondents show a high level of awareness of daily deal sites. In the perceptive area, convenience emerges as the driving factor in coupon buying. As to the self-perception area, some ambivalences emerge between smartness and compulsive buying, highlighting also some dissatisfaction. The ‘social dimension’ is almost irrelevant, and as to consumer behavior, daily deal buying seems to be a kind of fashion. Consumers perceive the bargain side of the offer, behaving like “cherry pickers”.