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What always struck me about Groupon is nothing to do about vendor complaints. If that was going to kill them it would have manifested as failing demand. It's a
by netcan 14y ago
What always struck me about Groupon is nothing to do about vendor complaints. If that was going to kill them it would have manifested as failing demand. It's a kind of no one goes there, too crowded argument.
The problem was/is almost the opposite, competition. I never saw, understood Groupons sustainable competitive advantage, especially in new markets/cities. They're obviously competent, but they are so easy to copy. $10k site, $100k ad campaign, 3 salespeople and you have a Groupon clone ready to compete in any city. We have a Groupon clone in the building I work in.
Anyway (getting to the actual content of this article), GRPN & FB seem to have something in common, at least to the extent that this article is correct. By IPO time all the value was already taken off the table.
- pbreit 14y agoYou would think that with 100s of failed efforts to copy that people would not be making this argument any more. It is obviously extremely difficult to copy and there's a very big scale advantage (deals go where the eyeballs are, eyeballs go where the deals are). And I don't think Groupon has capitalized too well on that as the deals have become incredibly generic (like the photography is not even business-specific).
- netcan 14y agoAlso 100s of successes. Also a bunch that are a success for a while and then fail for a while. Exactly how you expect a market with low entry barriers to behave. There are lots of cities where Groupon are one of several similar sized sites.