An evaluation of decision support system for substitute item group buying

Electronic commerce has been improving one of biggest market in the world. People can easily buy any items at the Internet marketplace. We study decision support systems for buyers in group buying. In group buying, when buyers cooperate with each other, a seller can discount the price of goods. Many existing group buying sites deal in the same goods or their imitations. Buyers make coalitions for each item on sale. Since buyers' coalitions are distributed into many group buying sites, the buyers cannot always purchase in a good at a lower price. Buyers need to search the goods they can purchase, however, it is hard to find effective buyer's group or good. To solve this problem, there exists some decision support system in group buying marketplace. In this paper, we characterize the decision support system and evaluate its effectiveness. We treat three methods for group integration. First, buyers purchase on simple group buying, which buyers do not use the decision support system. Second, all buyers are integrate, which the decision support system make a whole buyers coalition for purchasing a good. Third, some buyers are integrated, which buyers have a second choice. Our contribution of this research is a system evaluation for real situation, which the evaluation treats some complex condition.