• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.1-17
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• 2017

Based on increased popularity and use of social network services as a marketing tool, social commerce became an emerging trend in e-commerce platforms. Social commerce involves sellers offering potential consumers the products and services at a lower price in a limited time period. Through comparison of the performances of domestic social commerce websites, we found that the buying environment such as price, number of available products, and the remaining time period for sale has a significant difference influencing on the purchase decisions of consumers. This study aims to analyze the interaction effects and preference levels of four characteristics (price, discount rate, number of purchases and purchase time) by conducting choice-based conjoint analysis. Survey experiment was performed using a sample of 146 undergraduate and graduate students. The results showed that consumers importantly consider purchase time, discount rate, price, number of purchases in the order of their preference. Also, discount effect is more significant on purchase decisions than price effect and consumers distinguish less the differences among the buying environment characteristics in the closing days of purchase period. Customer segmentation using the preference levels of characteristics indicates that the preference levels have different effects in the purchase utility of each segment. The proposed customer segmentation and differences in feature utilities are expected to be valuable in forming future sales promotion strategies in social commerce.