Understanding Community Group Buying During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Integrative S-O-R/Flow Theory Model

The community group-buying industry in China has undergone significant expansion since 2019, primarily attributed to the centralized quarantine policies for epidemic prevention and control during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this growth, our comprehension of how consumers make decisions in scenarios with similar offerings remains limited. The study integrates flow theory into an S-O-R framework to investigate these dynamics. The conceptual model assessed whether two stimuli (i.e., consumer satisfaction and community engagement) influence the flow experience of consumers, potentially mediating their state of organisms through three categories of consumer inertia and leading to two specific responses (i.e., store preference and consumer commitment). The study demonstrates that flow experience can trigger consumer inertia as a heuristic shortcut, as maintaining store preference and consumer commitment involves consistently reinforcing positive satisfaction and encouraging active consumer participation. However, consumer satisfaction and lower community engagement merely sustain store preference and consumer commitment through consumer inertia. In contrast, a higher level of community engagement can directly influence store preference and consumer commitment. Consequently, community engagement is more critical than consumer satisfaction in cultivating community group buying. Additionally, affective-based inertia does not exhibit a significant association with store preference. Therefore, marketers need to make sympathetic connections to counter the proliferation of similar options. This study enriches the marketing literature on community group buying by exploring consumers’ flow experience and decision-making in complex scenarios.