Antecedents of consumers’ intention to revisit an online group-buying website: A transaction cost perspective

•TCE is employed to investigate consumer revisit of OGB websites.•Unpredictability and trust directly affect revisit intention.•Unpredictability has stronger negative effect on revisit for indirect visitors.•Personalization specificity's effect on revisit is stronger for direct visitors.•The effect of trust on revisit is stronger for direct visitors.

Consumers’ revisit is essential for online group-buying (OGB) websites to enhance financial and non-financial outcomes. From the perspective of transaction cost economics (TCE), this study identifies three context-specific TCE factors, i.e., unpredictability, trust, and personalization specificity, that can directly affect consumer revisit intention. Moreover, the proposed direct effects are arguably contingent upon the type of consumers (from direct versus indirect visiting channels). Our research model is empirically validated via an online survey. The results support the hypotheses that unpredictability and trust significantly influence consumers’ revisit intentions. In addition, the results indicate that the visiting channel moderates the effects of the transaction cost factors. Specifically, unpredictability has stronger negative effects on revisit intention for indirect visitors, while the positive effects of personalization and trust are stronger for direct visitors.