Online Consumer Behavior and Search Costs on Deal Seeking Forums

This paper seeks to establish the dynamics which exist in deal seeking forums. A model of consumer behavior regarding deals on the forum Slickdeals.net is proposed and tested. Further investigation is performed about user types and information exchange. From these investigations this paper proposes that consumer behavior on deal seeking forums is governed by the breakdown of users into influencers and browsers. This dynamic is the result of deal forums being used as broad communities of information exchange which lead to information overload in the processing of deals by browsing users. As such the logical method of information organization is dictated by the construction of the site itself. Because of this there are significant implications for the use of deal forums by marketers to test promotional strategies as well as for what the future of online consumer information consumption, exchange, and creation will entail.