Group Buying: a closer look

So these are my humble thoughts of successful group buying:

Imagine the situation: you have been planning a serious purchase this month. A very serious one. Say, you want to buy a new Honda Civic. I think that the price would be one of the biggest concerns for you in this case. Though this auto is far from being considered luxurious, still the money you'll have to give away for your purchase is quite a considerable sum. So you start thinking about the ways to find the best price or possibly just get a good discount. Group Purchase might be just the perfect solution for you.

"What's in it for me?" - you may ask. The best price possible! Isn't that a strong motivation for you to think about this option? It's more than just online fun shopping. The process goes this way: you find the existing group of people wishing to make the same purchase or initiate creating such group by yourself (if possible). You wait some period of time until the group is actually formed. The more members the group has, the more possible to get a better discount (ideal variant). The whole cycle closes and everybody's happy: shoppers make a purchase in an individual transaction while enjoying the advantages of group discounts, sellers manage to sell a great number of items at a time.

For me, as a shopper, the biggest problem is probably to find the buying group for my purchase (no matter what it is: an auto, iPhone or anything else). Once I found it, the further process is more or less clear. Of course, if I'm not familiar with group buy shopping model, I might also be concerned about trust, frauds, products' quality, customer service etc.

So these are my humble thoughts of successful group buying:

- Group buying site must be easy to understand, use and navigate, user-friendly in a word;

- Product and price information must be readily available;

- Shoppers must be able to establish a community around the products being sold to build collaboration and trust;

- Availability of all group buying information (minimum number of buyers, price variation depending on the number group members, closing dates etc);

- Sellers and shoppers must be guarded against fraud;

- Available customer support to shoppers and sellers in case of any questions that might appear from both sites.

Once you see this all is provided, you are welcome to try group purchase on the Internet (more info here) and enjoy the process. One thing is guaranteed for you for sure: you'll definitely make a good deal, save your time and money because enabling shoppers to get the best possible discount for the shopping item is the main idea of Group Buying.