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I don't get it - how is Groupon supposed to scale? What would be the point of them having 100000 small businesses in a city? They could hardly put them all on t
by Tichy 16y ago
I don't get it - how is Groupon supposed to scale? What would be the point of them having 100000 small businesses in a city? They could hardly put them all on their homepage? Also, they would need enough visitors to their homepage to drive business to all their clients.
What does Groupon offer, besides traffic (ie people who visit the Groupon homepage)? Can't small businesses just make up their own special offers? I mean if they are not on the front page of Groupon, they would gain little by going through Groupon, or so it seems to me.
- mbesto 16y agoGoto Groupon.com, the first thing they ask for is your town/city. So the "homepage" changes based on that.
- phpnode 16y agoYou're thinking short term, Groupon just needs to get to the stage where people think "I'll just check Groupon to see if I can get this cheaper" before every purchase. Then there's a million things they could do to take advantage of that visitor's purchasing intent, local price comparison for example
- Tichy 16y agoNone of these things are exclusive to Groupon, though. There are already lots of aggregators for coupons where you can check if you can get something cheaper.
- lfittl 16y agoThe point is that these aggregators are not in everyone's mind today. Groupon can use their current offering to reach everyone's mind, and then use that positioning (and therefore you going to their site) to do price comparison, focus on the user choosing specific topics of interest, etc.
- ra 16y agoYes but the counterpoint is that it's an easy-to-replicate idea
- pygy_ 16y agoHaving a large mindshare in a specific niche is neither an idea nor is it easy to replicate.
- Tichy 16y agoYeah but my point is, the only point of Groupon is their web site. So I don't see the point of them throwing sales people at small businesses. They need mindshare with their website, and I don't think you can drive internet traffic with sales people.
- bluelu 16y agoThey will certainly try to expand into different markets as well. e.g. open a store a la amazon with all the shops they features, etc, while having still a groupon deal each day on their site.