I actually did not know what Groupon was until recently. I am an eBay member. As a member, every week I receive deals from eBay letting me know I can use a discount in a lot of things or discounts on fees, the usual. This week I got an email from eBay saying Groupon was selling a $15 dollar coupon for $7 dollars. Thanks to Groupon, I bought a $20 dollar Blu-ray movie (with shipping) for $12 dollars. I know that $8 dollars is not that much but savings it’s always good.
After getting my $8 dollar discount, I decided to check what else Groupon has. I was impressed with all the discounts they have. I found discounts anything from hotels to racing car lessons. After seeing these discounts I wonder how does Groupon work and how could the company giving the discount afford to do this? Simple, Groupon will get a group of people to get a discount in one place. The company can afford to do it because they are getting a bigger volume of sales at one period of time.
I was thinking… I know a lot of people from work, from Facebook, and from school so why don’t I do the same as Groupon? I can contact a company and let them know that my friends and the friends of my friends would be going to their business in the same week. Also, I thought I could probably get some type of compensation from that company… you know just because I just brought over 100 people to their business.
After reading this article in the New York Times I guess I was not the only one that thought of this. There are a lot of Groupon copycats; copycats that are themed if you are gay, African-American, a business owner, and Jewish. There are probably more out there but that's all I could find.
The only difference between these sites and Groupon is the amount of members they have. Groupon has 60 million subscribers and the others… don’t. The only copycat that can compete with Groupon is LivingSocial with 10 million. In addition, it was reported that Groupon declined a $6 billion dollar buyout from Google. Also, LivingSocial had an investment from Amazon for $175 million.
I guess I was late on my idea. However, I would like to see how long this Groupon fever continues and how long it would last… Not long, Give another year or two until Facebook comes out with their own and it would take over the market.
That's the Truth,
Mauricio
Sources:http://www.groupon.com/deals/ebay/?affiliate_id=EBAYDEAL&utm_source=EBAY&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=EMAILWAVE2
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/business/smallbusiness/10sbiz.html?_r=2&scp=5&sq=groupon&st=cse
http://www.businessinsider.com/livingsocial-interview-2011-2#ixzz1GudPnaQe
