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Group buying (GB) is a popular business model in e-commerce. With the rise of online social media, the positive network effect of buying with others is more important than price discount for consumers to choose GB. However, the negative network effect of GB is also significant for some consumers. In this paper, we classify consumers into two segments considering both positive and negative network effects, and three possible sales strategies as well as their optimal decisions on price are presented. We find that GB strategy dominates individual buying (IB) strategy when the positive network effect is sufficiently high or the proportion of consumers with low valuation is relatively large. We also find that MIX strategy offering both IB and GB is always better than IB, while the relationship between MIX and GB is depending on actual market situations. Some other managerial insights are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo-Weberian closure theory developed principally by Parkin appears at first glance to suffer from two opposing weaknesses — that its central concept of exclusion is either too broad or too narrow. This paper demonstrates that these objections are spurious. It then uncovers several real problems which have not yet been examined by the critics of closure theory. These problems have to do with Parkin's conceptions of usurpation, of the withdrawal of services, and of property, as well as with the ambiguity in the politics of Parkin's closure theory. The paper corrects these weaknesses and clarifies this ambiguity and concludes that closure theory so-corrected provides a promising framework for going beyond analyses focused narrowly on one particular means of domination and one particular set of monopolization and exclusion rules to a focus on monopolization and exclusion per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]