| The 21 st century is an era of information. Internet has become an indispensable medium of daily communication in this golden age. Group-buying is generated under such social context. Group-buying it is new business model. It has turned into a globally popular operating model due to its unique price advantage. However, countless issues have been exposed by its virtual platform. For instance, credit crisis is becoming more and more serious in group-buying activities. In the meanwhile, the existing law is still unable to react and respond to various problems caused by group-buying. Current law and legal system seem to be so powerless when confronting this new business model. Since nowadays more and more customers are infringed upon their legal rights and there is a growing trend in consumer disputes, regulations in group-buying has been unprecedentedly important at this point. How to refine our law and regulations in group-buy has been an exigent problem. This paper will be discussing this problem in four parts.Part one starts with brief explanations of basic concepts. The network group purchase is not only the traditional group-buying combined with internet platforms and form a new type of shopping way. Firstly, we will explore the “new” e-commercial features in addition to the “old” traditional group-buying features. After that, by summarizing three operational modes, we will discover that the organizational structure of group-buying is determined by the pricing mechanism. Thus, we can see there are two types of pricing mechanism. The dynamic pricing mechanism dominated by customers and the static pricing mechanism launched by suppliers and third-party organizations. The author discloses the advantages and disadvantages of online group-buying by combining the “new” and “old” features with the three typical operational modes. The advantages: Buyers and sellers to increase total utility and is conducive to the distribution of resources. The disadvantages: Network group-buying competition in the market in the sub-health, lack of good faith crisis, the online payment guarantee mechanism is imperfect and so on. At the end this part, readers will find out that problems behind online group-buying come from not only the system but also the market. In addition, the author makes some concise analysis on the problems mentioned above by taking the underlying subjective relationships as the breakthrough point. When consider of subjective relationships, it’s not difficult to see that the legal relationship between organizers and suppliers can be deemed as cooperation relation, agency relation, brokerage relation or commission agent relation; We can also see that the legal relationship between consumers and organizers is derived from the sales contract between them; The relationship between consumers and suppliers have two views: no legal relationship and sales contract relationship; Lastly, the relationship between organizers and regulators is analogical to the guard and thief game and the legal relationship between them is a kind of relation of supervision: Only if the “guard”, which refers to regulators, conducts effective regulations, the market of group-buying can remain healthy.In the second part, in this dissertation is about the analysis on present legal supervision and management of Network group-buying. Firstly, expounds the laws and regulations of network group purchase in China, such as Law on Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers, Contract Law, Law of Electronic Signature, Network deals and service Regulations and so on. Secondly, the author pointed out that the lack of legal regulation is the vital reason for the mentioned problem. The reasons of legal system, lack of market regulation, unfairness in violation behavior punishment, weakness in administrative supervision.In the third part, in this dissertation is about analysis and citation of foreign regulations for online group-guying by comparing the relevant laws and policies made by the United Nations, the European Union, the U.S., Germany, Singapore and Australia. Based on the reality in our country, several things that can be learned from those countries or organizations are proposed. For example, the massive attention paid by the U.S. to privacy; the special attention given to the consumers’ rights of withdrawal; the high degree of independence of Germany’s regulations for Internet; Singapore’s responsibility to determine on the parties; The industrial self-disciplined mechanism set up by Australia.The last part will be discussing possible improvements in regulations of online group-buying. This part will be focusing on suggestive solutions to the problems raised in previous sections. In this paper, referring to the necessity of network group purchase legal supervision and legal supervision principles. Then put forward four Suggestions. Firstly, our legislation must be refined so that the subjects in the market can have laws to abide by. At this point, we only have one law related to e-commerce and that is the Law of Electronic Signature. However, the applications of the Law of Electronic Signature are quite limited. In the meanwhile, current laws can hardly satisfy the need of regulation for group-buying, which makes the refinement on legislation even more pressing. Secondly, we need to build up an effective administrative and supervising system. We should set up an industrial self-disciplined mechanism, improve the consumer dispute resolution system and popularize the third-party warrant mechanism. Subsequently, we must consummate the regulations for the in-and-out control and the operation of our virtual online market. Last but not least, we must clarify the legal responsibility of each subject and conduct a functional target-oriented responsibility system to avoid prevarications. Perfecting the regulations for online group-buying is significant when it comes to the protections for the rights of the three parties in group-buying activities. It secures the healthy development of our online group-buying market as well. |
PDF Full Text Request