Discounts and couponing sites communications through Facebook

Abstract

Electronic commerce and 2.0 platforms growth has been accompanied by the emergence and development of web sites which are notable for offering users products and services with attractive discounts or promotions. The aim of this article focuses on studying couponing sites communication through their spaces in the social network Facebook. It starts from the hypothesis that these web sites only use their spaces in Facebook to publish information about offers, discounts and promotions and generate limited conversation with their followers, despite popular follow-up they have. The method is based on documentary research of both, academic and professional publications, reviewing current situation of social media, revising development experienced by e-commerce and studying peculiarities of social commerce, on the one hand, and the analysis of case studies of major couponing and discounts sites, on the other. After this analysis, it is demonstrated that couponing sites use their presence in Facebook mainly as mere diffusion and traffic generation to offers and discounts channel, reducing their communications in this collaborative environment to this goal and offering limited conversation with user.