ACTG 630 – Case Assignment Due: Wednesday, December 3 Please submit one assignment per group. No more than 3 students per group. Read “Growing Pains at Groupon” by Dutta, Caplan and Marcinko (2014) and complete the questions included in the Case Requirements section (beginning on page 238). Instructions for accessing the FASB Codification database: 1. Go to http://aaahq.org/ascLogin.cfm 2. User ID: AAA51526 3. Password: x43AYtX ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION Vol. 29, No. 1 2014 pp. 229–245 American Accounting Association DOI: 10.2308/iace-50595 Growing Pains at Groupon Saurav K. Dutta, Dennis H. Caplan, and David J. Marcinko GROWING PAINS AT GROUPON A s an undergraduate music major at Northwestern University, Andrew Mason eagerly …show more content…
The company’s revenue growth was also impressive. Beginning with $94,000 in 2008, revenue had grown to $713 million in 2010. In the first quarter of 2011, the company nearly equaled its entire 2010 sales, reporting revenue of $644 million, and total revenue for 2011 was $1.6 billion. Andrew Mason became a media star, appearing on CNBC and The Today Show. In August of 2010, he appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine, which touted Groupon as ‘‘the fastest growing company—ever.’’ The spectacular growth attracted more than media attention. Groupon quickly found itself pursued by corporate suitors. By mid-2010, Yahoo! offered to purchase the company for a price between $3 billion and $4 billion—it was an offer that Mason, who had no wish to work at Yahoo!, quickly turned down. Google then approached Groupon with an offer that would eventually grow to nearly $6 billion. Groupon rejected Google’s offer, as well. Faced with an ever-growing need for cash, this decision left Mason and Lefkofsky with only one option: to take Groupon public. They did so on November 4, 2011, at an IPO price of $20 per share, yielding a market capitalization of $13 billion. On the day of the IPO, the stock closed near its all-time high of $26 a share. It traded in the range of $18 to $24 for several months following the IPO. The stock price then declined precipitously after March 30, 2012, as shown in Figure 1, following the announcement of a material weakness in internal controls,
Andrew Mason, Founder & CEO of Groupon, had a big idea, but was not aware how massive it could grow. Before Groupon, Mason begun a website called ThePoint.org as a site for collective action, to get groups of people together to solve public and social issues. It wasn’t as effective as he projected, and so started to think of how he could take the group approach of ThePoint.org and turn it into a business channel. Mason believed the Internet had potential to change how people discover and buy from local businesses. That’s when Andrew Mason came up with the excellent concept for Groupon. “Part of Groupon’s success is the simplicity of its business model…” (Kerin & Hartley, p. 110) Groupon offers “Deal of the Day” coupons from local and nationwide
Groupon, Inc. (“Groupon”) is a company that specializes in local commerce. It has relationships with companies on a global scale and alerts consumers on the hottest deals with respect to shopping for various products, travel destinations, and popular spots, goods and services that a city has to offer. The stock ticker for the company on the NASDAQ exchange is “GRPN.” The company is listed under the sector ‘Technology’ and industry ‘Internet Information Providers.’ It started off as ‘ThePoint.com, Inc.’ but in October 2008 it changed its name to ‘Groupon, Inc.” Groupon was founded in 2008 by the now ousted CEO Andrew Mason. The current CEO is Eric Lefkofsky who initially invested $1,000,000 toward the development of the company. The Chief
What helped Groupon grow from the 400 subscribers in 2008 to the 60 million it has today has been largely due to the company’s ways of understanding their customer’s behavior. One of the main reasons they were able to grow in the way they did, was due to Andrew Masons understanding of the current social trends. By doing so Groupon was able to utilize the rapid growth of the Internet and technology such as mobile applications, reaching out to their customers in a quick and simple way, solving the problem of connecting with local consumers.
Groupon’s primary strategy for growth is sales and marketing. They use complex analytics to segment customers not only by city but more specifically, by neighborhood. They target these customers with marketing that is close to home and relevant to their demographic. They provide local businesses with instant access to droves of local customers and in exchange they split the revenue from the sales of “groupons” with the local businesses. Groupon’s market name recognition and vast data warehouses containing intimate customer data give them an advantage over competitors. They use this data to buy Google Ad Words that will attract the most customers and provide an
We already mentioned that the company recently made its billionth sale, but it holds another special honor involving billions as well. The company was valued at $1 billion after just 16 months - the fastest a company has ever accomplished this.
Share Data Price - $58.40 Date – April 14, 2003 Target Price - $60.35 52 Week Price Range - $53.00 - $67.10 Market Capitalization - $ 64.644 Billion Shares Outstanding – 1.12 Billion Revenue - $31.272
Groupon is valued at 5 billion dollars. It makes money through deals with businesses individually. Groupon doesn’t make money until users access their website and use the coupons at the stores. This is as Groupon states, “we don’t make money until you make money”. Groupon ranges in profit from deals as for each deal they reach an agreement, they make from $2000 on the lower ends, to even $45000. We cannot be charging businesses as much as Groupon is because we are a new start up to this industry. We have to gather a set user base followed by deals that businesses will want to accept as we are a small start-up trying to attack the bigger
The price per share of the common stock as of the most recent fiscal year-end date, which is January 28, 2012, is $18.69. On the other hand, the price per share on November 3, 2012, which is the day we can see the close price before the report date, is $35.11.
The development of Groupon was very rapidly in early stage. In October 2008, it launched its first deal. It is incredibly that, in 2010, Groupon was serving more than 150 market in North America, 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America, and
Stock for anyone share dropped from $90 per share to one dollar per-share causing shareholders to lose nearly 11 billion. And another financial statement revision was created for the previous five years and found 586 million and losses. Leading to the big group see that collapsed in 2001.
“Groupon breaks into new markets by identifying successful local businesses, first by sending in an advance a number of employees to research the local market; when it finds a business with outstanding reviews, salespeople approach it and
Groupon’s business model is much different than that of WalMart. WalMart is the largest retailer in the world consisting of physical store entities such as WalMart U.S., WalMart International, and Sam’s Club in addition to it e-commerce sites. Their business model has everything you can think of (shown in Exhibit A), from relations with their supplies to relations with their trade partners. WalMart maintains its mottos of “Always low prices” and “Save money, live better” by focusing a great deal on its suppliers. Because of the size of the company and its continuing needs, WalMart is able to negotiate immensely well with its suppliers to fulfill such a slogan. On the other hand, Groupon is not so much a physical entity as it focuses in the e-commerce industry. To put it in simple terms, Groupon is an online middleman offering discounts for local shops and restaurants. The business model entails Groupon offering discounts at such locations to its customers/subscribers on a
Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website that is localized to major geographic markets worldwide. Launched in November 2008, the first market for Groupon was Chicago, followed soon thereafter by Boston, New York City, and Toronto. Groupon has over 50 million subscribers across 300 cities in more than 40 countries. The idea for Groupon was created by Andrew Mason who is currently the company’s CEO. [update]Groupon serves more than 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America and has amassed 60 million registered users. The growth in the future is likely to be at a slower pace, primarily because the company is already one of the largest in the local deals space.
$583,000,000 up 74 percent from 1981. Its net earnings were $1.06 a share, up 55
controlled 37 percent of its market with revenue of about $1.2 million. Immediately after the