In accordance with the present invention, a method and system of communal
purchasing is disclosed. The preferred embodiments describe a community
purchase model where a product can be purchased a particular price only
if enough buyers are willing to purchase at that price. The preferred
embodiments pool together the collective buys for a product to get a
better price than if an individual buyer was to purchase the product by
himself/herself. Therefore, a fixed "discount" price is used to collect a
number of buys, wherein the number of buys is recorded in a specific
product record and the transaction to purchase the product is consummated
if the number of buys for the product reaches a minimum number of buys.
Moreover, further embodiments obtain a pre-payment or a guarantee for
payment for the product while collecting buys for the product. In
addition, further embodiments set a cutoff date by when the number of
buys must reach the number of minimum number of buys or cancel the
product purchase if the cutoff date has been reached and the number of
buys for the product associated with the product record does not reach
the minimum number of buys.