Groupon : The Fastest Growing Company Ever Essay

After discovering errors in its accounting and the failure to set aside enough reseveres for customer refunds, Groupon. Inc announced revision of its first financial results posted as a public company in April 2012, which resulted in a cut to its 2011 fourth-quarter revenue of $14.3 million. In addition, this revision has reduced its fourth quarter operating income by $30 million, net income by $22.6 million, and earnings per share by $0.04, due to an increase of operating expenses after compliance with GAAP.

Groupon has aggressively promoted its well-known green and black logo through various means online such as affiliate marketing, referral programs, and search engine marketing by creating a strong brand name (Wheelen, Hunger, Hoffman, & Bamford, p 11-15). Groupon’s brand name is undoubtedly associated with the “daily-deals” offered by local companies within particular cities. This resonates with people who have conservative spending habits and limited income. This has attracted the large number of subscribers which adds to the value desired by

Groupon has become the No. 1 of deal-daily Internet companies, and I think that its information systems are good enough. Either security issues, or technical support are good enough so far. However, Groupon still need to focus on the future because this industry is very competitive. Groupon have to keep learning and improving. Therefore, I recommend that Groupon should focus on the aspect of data storage and payment method.

Groupon is a unique city guide that makes it easy for people to save some money when they are out and about. It has been in operation since 2009 and is among the most used sites in the UK.

· I will persuade by stating that Groupon has strong, prominent, professional and unique capacity to expand more widely in short period of time. Groupon investment opportunity would be the best option.

Groupon Inc. established in November, 2008 by Andrew Mason is an American e-trade firm with its central station in Chicago Illinois with more than 11,000 representatives and has its vicinity set up in near 50 nations (Yahoo Finance,2013). Groupon Inc. oversees Groupon organizations everywhere the world and is worth of multibillion dollars in income, offers also, stocks (Yahoo Finance, 2013).).The customary methods for leading little organizations are being rethought by Groupon; for dealers through procurement of sets of items or administrations including customized arrangements, and brand publicizing, installment preparing abilities, and POS answers for inspire more clients and do their business for them adequately, and for clients, offer of

Groupon is a deal-of-the day Internet start-up company that was launched in 2008 in Chicago.

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.

The major problem with Groupon today is the continuous shrinking profit margins on new business lines, which in fact make future earnings and revenue growth unsustainable.

Prior to Groupon’s IPO, the SEC forced the Company to restate the S-1 financials for 2008, 2009 and 2010 under GAAP. Gone was the ACSOI accounting metric that allowed it to inflate its revenue figures. The company also reported in its updated 10-K filing that it had started to use an improved refund model to better track and ensure that it maintains a reserve for anticipated refunds. The new more subdued figures can be seen below in Figure 2.

Groupon’s history is an interesting story, starting with Founder Andrew Mason. Mason dropped out of school when an investor said that he would fund a startup business online called ThePoint, a social media platform which was geared towards getting groups of people together to solve problems and reach goals, and wanted Mason to run the business (Carlson, 2011). When this failed to gain presence online and take off, Mason founded Groupon on the idea that he wanted some way to leverage a large number of people’s collective bargaining power. Groupon was launced in 2008 (Brown, 2011). In 2011, Groupon launched the “Getaways” feature which would

Groupon, Incorporated (Groupon) is a national e-commerce marketplace that connects local merchants to local consumers by offering goods and/or services at a discount. Each day Groupon e-mails its subscribers discounted offers for goods and services that are targeted by

A sum of $1 million was invested to develop the idea and in April 2010, the company was valued at $1.35 billion. According to a December 2010 report conducted by Groupon’s marketing association and reported in Forbes Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, Group was projecting that the company is

“Groupon! Get your Groupon! Hot off the presses!” It wasn’t too long ago Groupon Inc. was the darling of Wall Street. Institutional and individual investors alike were anxiously anticipating an opportunity to buy shares of the company dubbed by Fast Company as “the most exciting thing to happen to retail since eBay.” That excitement was mirrored on November 4, 2011, Groupon’s first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, as the price sky-rocketed to a high of $31.14 compared to its initial $20.00 IPO valuation. However, that unbridled enthusiasm has dwindled since as the stock has plummeted to an all-time low of $3.83 as of Friday November 2, 2012 (Yahoo! Finance 2012). Let’s take a

The fund- raising round, according to people familiar with the matter, valued Groupon at $4.875 billion. A ballpark valuation number has been reported previously by TechCrunch. Here is a partial list of firms that invested in Groupon in the fund raising round that closed in January, according to Groupon’s IPO filing, and their estimated paper windfall based on Deal Journal’s reporting. We don’t know yet if any of these