5 ms·
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has a business background or has ever worked in retail. I have no doubt their business will continue to be succes
by maukdaddy 16y ago
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has a business background or has ever worked in retail.
I have no doubt their business will continue to be successful, as b&m stores are, but I have serious doubt about their sustained growth prospects as the newness of their model wears off. At some point Groupon is going to have to rely on the same sleazy sales tactics as b&m stores, which will turn off a majority of the early adopters.
- RBr 16y agoSomething I learned from business and retail: Groupon and their clones only need to pull these types of shenanigans to scale. If they refine the model to compete largely with themselves, in the end, the company will win. In order to do this, Groupon (or likely a smart clone) needs to break itself apart into niches and dominate the smaller markets that they are engaged in.
- brown9-2 16y agoFor all we know what the TC commenter experienced could be one sleazy Groupon salesperson all on their own, trying to meet some sort of sales quota.
- mrkurt 16y agoSleazy sales people are not uncommon when you have a sales process with incentives that encourage that kind of behavior. All the horror stories of car dealers, Yelp, and commission based retail can be attributed to "one sleazy salesperson", but that person doesn't operate in a vacuum.
- travisp 16y agoEven retail stores are somewhat limited in their ability to do this (not that some don't do it anyway). As stated, it would seem to run counter to FTC section 233: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/decptprc.htm http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/decptprc.htm
- barista 16y agoThe fact that Groupon has to engage in such tactictss goes to show that they are hitting the limits. IMO they were idiots not to take the GOOG offer. It was a huge one and I doubt they will ever reach that valuation again. Discounts like gropon never work I don't know many people who have give n the business a consistenty repeat busiinessafter going there first using a groupon. The growth is staggering but not sustainable.
- anamax 16y ago> IMO they were idiots not to take the GOOG offer. It was a huge one and I doubt they will ever reach that valuation again. You're assuming that money is the only thing that counts for them.
- trotsky 16y agoThey're just in it for the social benefit of revolutionizing the day spa customer acquisition game?
- anamax 16y agoOr, they'd rather be in charge at a small company than a property manager at Google.
- akgerber 16y agoIt's not hard to build another small company when you're incredibly rich.
- nazgulnarsil 16y agoit's harder to build a profitable company when you're rich. instead of solving problems you'll be tempted to throw money at them.