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Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

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Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#121

Post by RyanZAG »

bane wrote: post #16

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…

Isn't this the whole problem? You used Groupon to do a bunch of stuff you wouldn't normally do at below cost. That's great for you. It's also exactly the opposite of providing value for a business as you're going to hop to the next Groupon deal instead of sticking to that first Scuba company. You'll probably never Scuba again as soon as the coupon expires.

EDIT: I think you might be right that it could work though. It's a numbers game. If you lose $X in groupon charges but gain $Y in new customers then it's a net win for the business. However, you also lose $Z from existing customers (lots of obvious reasons here). So you need $X to be small enough - and obviously that isn't the case with Groupon. However, there's no reason why a company couldn't work that uses customization to supply the 'right' individual with a coupon instead of everyone with a coupon. Credit history? Tip history? Recurring business history?

'Groupon with AI' might be what we need here?

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#122

Post by Rambition »

I've had in a hand in a few Groupon/daily deal campaigns for some clients and their experiences all seemed to depend on the quality of the product/service they could provide. An established restaurant I would find it hard to believe they would extract value out of this type of discount. However, a new product to market that believes a customer can have a good enough experience and can deliver on that the first time they try it out, may be more apt to succeed on daily deal type of sites. It follows the "free trial" model of direct response (without the shady autobilling on the backend), just get the product in their hands and let it do the talking for you.

As a consumer, I love the model. As a business owner/marketer, the results have been so/so.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#123

Post by teachrdan »

Anyone else notice they refer to Puerto Rico as "international"? Fun Fact 1: It's a US territory, where residents are US citizens but can't vote for president. Fun Fact 2: Journalists these days ain't what they used to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#124

Post by commandar »

steveklabnik wrote: post #118
zck wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, for things like restaurant deals, theoretical tipping etiquette is that you should tip based on the pre-discount total.

The vast majority of people don't/don't realize that's the case, though, which makes huge half-off type deals pretty miserable for wait staff.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#125

Post by mgkimsal »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #75
deepanchor wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps the 'group' aspect should have been played up more, and sold to restaurants as "pre book a group of 10 or more and save 20%". Getting a group of folks to book ahead of time will let them know when to schedule, they'll have a deposit, and they can accomodate the group accordingly. Don't treat them as 2nd class, but they're booking ahead so they get better treatment... ?

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#126

Post by wahsd »

bane wrote: post #16

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…

You touch on something quite important that is really kind of at the core of the whole startup community, the predatory nature. Startups end up taking on massive financing and several masters with massive egos and even bigger expectations nX returns which pushes companies and founders towards becoming predatory and manipulative and generally cheating out of necessity because their masters have set quotas. Groupon "and its ilk" could very well be reborn one day and in a far more sustainable manner by not preying on businesses and undercutting markets.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#127

Post by bane »

RyanZAG wrote: post #121
bane wrote: post #16

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…

Isn't this the whole problem? You used Groupon to do a bunch of stuff you wouldn't normally do at below cost. That's great for you. It's also exactly the opposite of providing value for a business as you're going to hop to the next Groupon deal instead of sticking to that first Scuba company. You'll probably never Scuba again as soon as the coupon expires. EDIT: I think you might be right that it could work though. I…

One of the problems with Groupon is that it's not just a marketing expense. It brings people in which need to be serviced, which ties up the normal operations for the business. Businesses do retain some customers via Groupon, but it's probably less than 10%, and I think those retention rates need to be better understood so businesses can better reason for how to use it as a marketing tool.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#128

Post by rrdharan »

CPLX wrote: post #99
nate wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this comment. I think you raise what most of us should really think hard about when we see the struggles Groupon is going through. We like to throw them into a big, bulk, category and dismiss the entire thing as "bad business". But just like you pointed out, you really enjoyed it as a consumer. And I know businesses that have been running groupons for years, because they also get a lot out of it in…

> Now we have instacart, postmates, Amazon Prime Now, Peapod, and more making this model work of fast, local, delivery. We also have smartphones now. I was a big fan of Kozmo (and its NYC competitor UrbanFetch) but it was an entirely different kind of experience shopping on an EGA monitor with a dialup connection and I understand why it wasn't as easy to make it work.

I find it very dubious that you had an EGA monitor hooked up to a machine capable of surfing the Internet, in the very late 1990s/early 2000s.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#129

Post by smackfu »

teachrdan wrote: post #123

Anyone else notice they refer to Puerto Rico as "international"? Fun Fact 1: It's a US territory, where residents are US citizens but can't vote for president. Fun Fact 2: Journalists these days ain't what they used to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico

I didn't realize that Puerto Rico had its own top level domain:

http://www.groupon.com.pr/pages/home

Apparently the site is shut-down already.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#130

Post by pmelendez »

RyanZAG wrote: post #121
bane wrote: post #16

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…

Isn't this the whole problem? You used Groupon to do a bunch of stuff you wouldn't normally do at below cost. That's great for you. It's also exactly the opposite of providing value for a business as you're going to hop to the next Groupon deal instead of sticking to that first Scuba company. You'll probably never Scuba again as soon as the coupon expires. EDIT: I think you might be right that it could work though. I…

>That's great for you. It's also exactly the opposite of providing value for a business as you're going to hop to the next Groupon deal

That's not always true. I rarely use a groupon alone and ending buying addons at the regular price. You might lose money in one item but win in another. That's why retails focus in bringing you to the store not matter what.

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