I'll be honest, I know Groupon and its ilk are terrible business, but as a user of the service I've had lots of fun exploring activities and restaurants that I literally would never have bothered with or known about. In the last few weeks I've taken a Scuba lesson, a Horse Riding lesson, an intro to art class, found a couple new amazing sandwich shops. I took an amazing trip to Ireland for something like 50% off the…
Was Groupon's fundamental problem that it started out with the wrong economics? Was 50% off and 50% of the remaining going to the business just never viable?
My experiences with Groupon mirror your own. Whenever my friends and I would show up to a business with a Groupon, we would be treated with bad attitudes, worse service and just general reluctance when the exact opposite should have been true. I mean, that is the entire point of Groupon right? To promote a business -to spread the word on the street about how great your restaurant/bowling alley/pub is. Sadly, it has b…
My experience has been different. I used a Cheesecake Factory Groupon once and was given a special meal that reflected the "value" of my Groupon. It felt like a complete rip-off on top of a restaurant that was already overpriced. $30 for Cheese, bread, and a few grapes and strawberries? I stopped using Groupon after that. It reminds me of Massdrop. You expect to get a deal by purchasing something in "mass" with other…
I guess we're a bit off topic, but I look at Massdrop as a curated list of competitively priced items. I agree they're pricing isn't rock bottom, though they imply it, however, I still think it's a great service because it's always a good price and generally a good product.
I thought that before even trying Groupon. I can't imagine how coming in as a 2nd-class customer will improve my experience. Rather pay well, tip big and enjoy the best service they have to offer. Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around.
But shouldn't Groupon just be a marketing expense? I'm not saying that the company should be ok losing money all the time, but it's common for companies to spend money to acquire customers. Do you avoid all "new customer" deals? It seems like companies on Groupon, for whatever reason, often offer way more of a discount than they're comfortable with. I wonder why that is.
I think there were a bunch of stories implying that it was because of pressure and misleading reassurances from the Groupon sales people signing them up combined with poor business sense from the small-time owners, in most cases.
That's a long fall from Google practically begging them to take fat stacks of cash.
I remember, back during their heyday, listening to pundits discuss how Groupon was going to run Google out of business if Google couldn't find a better way to offer daily deals. I regularly saw people mentioning Groupon in the same breath as Amazon and Apple when speaking of tech giants.
All I remember what thinking that they were insane to not take the buyout. Seems I was right.
My experiences with Groupon mirror your own. Whenever my friends and I would show up to a business with a Groupon, we would be treated with bad attitudes, worse service and just general reluctance when the exact opposite should have been true. I mean, that is the entire point of Groupon right? To promote a business -to spread the word on the street about how great your restaurant/bowling alley/pub is. Sadly, it has b…
I thought that before even trying Groupon. I can't imagine how coming in as a 2nd-class customer will improve my experience. Rather pay well, tip big and enjoy the best service they have to offer. Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around.
"Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around."
I've heard from business owners/clients who try "group" discount services, but walk away feeling that it did little to help their customer growth long term Sales and discounts aren't a good way to increase customer growth unless they're done consistently. There's a reason that I get a free salad when I get a pizza; no one really wants that salad. There's a reason they have $5 beers every Monday at a bar; no one wants…
> If the business owners/clients are stupid enough to give away the best experiences for cheap, it's their own damn fault for not having any business sense whatsoever. And yet Groupon is closing down operations in 7 countries and laying off 1000 people. Groupon's customers are these small businesses, for Groupon to succeed it needs to be in a symbiotic relationship with these businesses. "It's your fault for being an…
That's a good point; and it should have been an obvious avenue for Groupon to serve those customers.
I thought that before even trying Groupon. I can't imagine how coming in as a 2nd-class customer will improve my experience. Rather pay well, tip big and enjoy the best service they have to offer. Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around.
But shouldn't Groupon just be a marketing expense? I'm not saying that the company should be ok losing money all the time, but it's common for companies to spend money to acquire customers. Do you avoid all "new customer" deals? It seems like companies on Groupon, for whatever reason, often offer way more of a discount than they're comfortable with. I wonder why that is.
The business might consider it a marketing expense, but the employee might also take a hit through things like reduced tips.
Based on her likely experience with the previous ten groupon customers, you basically announced "I intend to tip you 25% of what you were expecting."
Based on it being Shoreditch, which is in London, the tip should have been 10%. Do many people leave 2½% (essentially no) tip in London?
Nearly everyone tips based on the coupon value, not the market value. So that's maybe 50% less. They're also more "value minded" customers, who are likely to tip at the low end. Regular customers sometimes get the expensive bottle of wine; groupon users only ever get the cheapest bottle, if any. And then you get a subset of people who bring a $20 groupon and exactly $20 to the restaurant.
It doesn't mean everyone using groupon is automatically a jerk, but it definitely selects in that direction.
I thought that before even trying Groupon. I can't imagine how coming in as a 2nd-class customer will improve my experience. Rather pay well, tip big and enjoy the best service they have to offer. Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around.
But shouldn't Groupon just be a marketing expense? I'm not saying that the company should be ok losing money all the time, but it's common for companies to spend money to acquire customers. Do you avoid all "new customer" deals? It seems like companies on Groupon, for whatever reason, often offer way more of a discount than they're comfortable with. I wonder why that is.
It's not always the company. In the case of the USA and their insane tipping customs, a customer coming in with groupon specials is going to end up tipping less. Since the whole service at USA restaurants is based around tipping, the employees know they won't really get tipped well so they're very customer hostile.