Social shopping promotions from a social merchant's perspective

Taking advantage of Web 2.0's user-participation and social networking capabilities, social shopping intermediaries have emerged as a promising online liaison between merchants and consumers by offering group discount deals to price-sensitive customers and early technology adopters. Our study compares the two most popular types of social merchants-restaurants and healthcare services-in terms of seven key factors that influence a merchant's sales using a Groupon promotion. We find that these two types of social merchants show significantly different characteristics for successful promotions. Based on a new proposed lifetime value model for social shopping promotions, this study also discusses its applicability with an illustration of the model and presents guidelines for social merchants who want to achieve the maximum lifetime value from a social shopping promotion. Finally, we discuss implications of our study for social merchants and social shopping intermediaries. (C) 2012 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.