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No doubt, it is sad for your friendly neighborhood restaurant to go out of business, but at the end of the day it is every owner / manager's responsibility to u
by dmk23 15y ago
No doubt, it is sad for your friendly neighborhood restaurant to go out of business, but at the end of the day it is every owner / manager's responsibility to understand and own up to their pricing and discounting decisions. Of course if you'd offer to give up a dollar for a quarter (exact economics of a Groupon deal) you'll get swamped with takers and get ruined.
Groupon salesforce surely sold them stories on how great it is, but at the end of the day there is no excuse for not doing your own math. I suspect many "Groupon drove me out of business" stories are simply a way to blame someone for the overall business failure. Might as well say "it is due to economy" or "changing neighborhood demographics" or "to spend more time with family" or really anything.
EDIT: When I say "blame" I mean anything listed as a "reason". People often like to be indirect when they do the blaming.
- steve-howard 15y agoAccording to the statement linked in the article, they're abundantly clear that they don't blame Groupon.
- itmag 15y agoAccording to a podcast I listened to once (can't remember the source but my best guess is Mixergy), the best way to utilize Groupon is to have a plan for customer retention and upselling. Not just attract a bunch of coupon-hunters who just want to get something for dimes on the dollar. I believe the example they used in the podcast was sky diving. Lots of possibilities for retention ("get a rebate on your next jump if you sign up for membership") and up/cross-selling ("we have t-shirts").
- coffee 15y ago> ...but at the end of the day there is no excuse for not doing your own math. You're over simplifying it. Just about every merchant can understand that they are giving up a dollar for a quarter. They get that. What they don't understand, and what the hard sell is, is customer retention. Being sold on repeat customers that will drive revenues in the long term based off of a one-time loss lead (advertising cost).
- redsymbol 15y agoUnderstanding all that is the biz owner's responsibility too.