3 ms·
This article has some serious problems. There's a huge anti-Groupon bias (apparently shared with most of HN). This is fine, it's ok not to like Groupon, but som
by edanm 15y ago
This article has some serious problems. There's a huge anti-Groupon bias (apparently shared with most of HN). This is fine, it's ok not to like Groupon, but some of the points this article makes are absolutely terrible.
For example, take this: "I had been struggling to understand why some businesses ran repeat Groupons or cycled among the various daily deal vendors, given that the economics clearly suck if you can’t drive repeat traffic. Some let the same customer buy 3 or more of the same deal. That’s a clear no-no for a loss-leader designed to acquire new customers.
A conversation with Forkfly (a Groupon Now competitor) CEO Paul Wagner was enlightening. He suggested that they were doing what struggling families do when they max out a credit card—they get another one."
Let's look at what's happening here. There's actual, real-world evidence that the author may be wrong - small businesses are returning to Groupon. This doesn't make sense if Groupon is really such a terrible deal. So the author tries to explain this evidence.
What's the best way to do this? Go talk to the business owners who return to Groupon, and ask them why. That's what most people would do when trying to understand their behavior.
But instead, what does the author present? He talks to one of Groupon's competitors! The competitor, non-surprisingly, tries to dismiss this evidence. And he specifically tries to imply that the businesses doing this are not acting properly, comparing them to people who habitually overspend.
I'm not saying the author is wrong - but this is not the right way to make this point, and is simply a way to take a dig at Groupon, and dismiss the people who might prove that Groupon is worthwhile.
Or take this: "I’ve also heard from merchants who say Groupon has changed their deals at the last minute to make them more profitable for Groupon."
This is a cheap-shot, thrown in at the end of an (otherwise legitimate) paragraph. Either there are real cases or there aren't, but just saying "I've heard some people complaining" is just terrible reporting. If you think Groupon's done something wrong here, talk about it, don't just mention it offhand to tarnish their reputation.
Conclusion: Like I said, I don't know whether Groupon is good or bad for businesses. I don't know if many people truly know, actually. But articles like this, which go out of their way to bash Groupon, are not the right way forward.
- pja 15y agoRight, because obviously a small business owner is going to be happy to tell some random journalist who phones them up, "Yeah, we did that third GroupOn deal because otherwise we weren't going to be able to pay the rent". They'll make up some waffle that regurgitates GroupOn talking points in order to justify their actions to an outsider without giving away the fact that the company is on the verge of bankruptcy & if word gets out all their staff will walk.
- edanm 15y agoDo you realize that by that same logic, you're basically saying journalism can't exist, period? It's always a case of some "random journalist" phoning people up and asking them tough questions. Journalism does exist, of course, so obviously there are ways around this problem. They're pretty easy to see even in this case - journalistic confidentiality, i.e. the journalist won't reveal the source, therefore no one will know anything about which company is on the verge of bankruptcy.
- pja 15y agoSorry, I don't see the contradiction at all. Of course journalism is about asking "tough questions" but there's nothing that compels the interviewee to answer those questions, and even if they do answer truthfully their "truth" may differ from yours. As the original article makes clear, how you classify the way a small business interacts with GroupOn is very much a matter of perception: through one lens it looks like a small business loan with a weird structure. A small business owner might see it differently & GroupOn itself has a vested interest in not having their customers view GroupOn deals in that way of course.
- edanm 15y ago"Sorry, I don't see the contradiction at all. Of course journalism is about asking "tough questions" but there's nothing that compels the interviewee to answer those questions, and even if they do answer truthfully their "truth" may differ from yours." Sorry, I guess I wasn't being very clear earlier. What I meant was, by the same argument as to why the author couldn't talk to store owners, by that very same logic, journalists can never talk to primary sources. Because I can take any journalistic piece, and say "the source that the jouranlist talked to is just making up answers because XYZ". And like I tried to explain, the way out of this mess is a few things - the journalist can interrogate and try to get past the bias of the source, and they can also promise to keep conversations off the record. But saying "well I can't talk to primary sources, I'll just talk to other people" is a cop-out. Especially when the other people also have a clear bias in this story.