What Are The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Groupon

Groupon is a deal based business that brings customers discounted deals from the businesses. As a result of massive success and the growing competition, the business is faced with the option of either selling to Google or developing an effective marketing strategy for continuing its own. In the due context, the underlying report proposes a marketing plan for successfully dealing with the market challenges (Chatterjee, O”Keeffe, and Streiff, 2012).

An online website was launched, but failed to function properly: customers ordered 4000 wallets for free with invalid coupons, and the company now finds itself wondering whether to cancel them. Search keywords and bids were bought to gain visibility on search engines, but almost half of them have not generated profit. A discussion on Big Skinny was stimulated on social media through the use of AddThis applets. The company had furthermore established a presence on global, trusted online retail portals: Amazon, Buy.com and eBay. Finally, A/B testing was conducted, also leading to an increase in visibility.

Second, the customers switching costs was small. Members were likely to drop out anytime they like or renew membership. According to statistics, about 30% of members dropped out after a year and 70% members renew their yearly subscription every year. Because of this situation, the competition between the exiting competitors had become more intense. As noted before, the company should provide diverse products and addition of new programs to get back members.

Groupon is an internet website company focused on generating revenue by utilizing relationships with merchants to provide consumers with discounts on select items. The goal of the discounted vouchers is to drive additional consumer store traffic and generate revenue for merchants which are shared with Groupon via a predetermined contractual percentage. Groupon generates visibility and exposure with email and social networking to increase consumer spending at specific merchants. Groupon has many features from personalization of product offerings to specific demographics and target segments. In addition, a more defined value proposition allowing merchants an opportunity to showcase their own product offerings on

Frank Sennett’s book Groupon’s Biggest Deal Ever chronicles the rise to internet glory of multi-billion dollar company, with an unlikely captain at the helm. That man is Andrew Mason and eccentric computer nerd who ended up finding himself touted as the next Mark Zuckerberg. Book tells the unlikely tale of a 29 year old start-up geek and the cold calculating but reasonable investor behind him, Eric Lefkofsky. Together they would go on to eventually found a company that would turn down Google’s 6 billion dollar offer, the biggest deal in internet history.

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

The three problematic areas that Groupon will face in its future are use and repeat purchases, managing its growth, and high levels of competition. For some of us we by our coupons months in advance and forget to use them which often leaves us dissatisfied about the purchase. Still with its lack of customer loyalty new subscribers are flocking to the website, which has created a demand for continuous expansion of the company’s infrastructure as well as goods and services that it offers. Moreover, the inundation of mobile devices has created some competition. Now anyone with a smartphone can save money on the spot. This has leveraged the competition against Groupon. For example will shopping at Kohls I used a 20% off coupon I found on my phone

The Bandon Group has identified several specific sets of information needs. First they must have the ability to analyze existing customer accounts for profitability. The have a need to understand which account they are making money off of and which account represent high volume profits. Second, they must have an effective sales prospecting system. The ability to measure the

Groupon is a real deal industry that operates within the Electronic commerce also referred to as e-commerce is a module of business that employs computer networks, namely the internet to trade and to sell and buy. At its essence it is an industry that uses technology and the internet to conduct business. Moreover, the e-commerce industry may employ online shopping where customers can use internet access to shop and trade between businesses or between customers and businesses. Groupon is a geographically diversified publicly traded company that operates based off of the ecommerce sale of the day model. This industry business model caters to customers shopping for deals and employs the means of using marketing, and cost saving strategies to entice potential clients by offering discounted coupons to potential clients for savings at various groups. There are discretionary concerns that are notably present for companies that operate in this industry, namely the fact that in a weak economic environment people are less likely to spend money on memberships at clubs and eating out at premier places.

As Groupon is established in many countries of the world, a global strategy has to be pursued

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 bargaining power of customers is high. First of all, the customer size is tremendous globally, which also has an accelerating growth rate in recent years. Customers’ leverage is strengthening as a result of this. Another inevitable factor is that with countless retailors online, there is low switching cost for customers to find other alternative companies that suits their desire to conduct purchases. Moreover, consumers today are more sophisticated. Consumers are less commit to impulsive-buying, yet are more willing to study about product features and evaluate their options before purchasing online. Their purchase pattern can also be hard to learn too.

In my opinion Groupon is not a ready-to-go solution to the problem of low marketing budgets of many local merchants. If Groupon is good

With the internet technology, everyone can stay at home for online shopping. What’s more, if you can enjoy daily discounts with all the information, home delivery and 24-hours daily operation, that’s all can be found by buying Groupon. Groupon, the company has successfully captured millions of online consumers throughout the world. The marketing strategy of Groupon captures the consumer behavior. Consumer buying behavior, defined as... “The buying behavior of final consumers, individual and households who buy goods and services for personal”.Groupon consumers mainly responses to:

TWOS is a planning tool used by managers to strategize and position their business in the order that assures sustained positive performance. TOWS is simply an inverted SWOT common used on analyzing performance and position of businesses. while SWOT begins with strength, weakness, opportunity and then threats faced by a business, TOWS matrix of business analysis begins with threats, opportunities, weaknesses then strengths faced by a business in that order. Under TOWS matrix of business analysis, threats and opportunities categorize as external environment factors that affect the business in particular ways (Koontz and Weihrich 112). Strengths and weaknesses usually categorize under internal environment that impact a business in particular ways.