It is just a badly ran business. The Chinese version of Groupon is ran by the very competent Xing WANG, who was a physics graduate student. And last time I looked at it Meituan was worth $15B.
Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
141–150 of 256 posts
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#142I'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…
I stopped using groupon because of the near-universal resentment I felt from the employees of the stores selling the groupons. Clearly, these businesses weren't getting the value they thought they would get, but I wonder how much of that was the way they treated the new customers that the groupon generated.
It's usual for the management of a franchise to organize these groupoun promotions. The owners of the stores is whom suffer.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#143Earlier 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.
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.
I'm sure a lot of people do that, but the appropriate etiquette when using a coupon at a restaurant is to tip on the full price. Most adults who frequent restaurants should know that.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stopped using groupon because of the near-universal resentment I felt from the employees of the stores selling the groupons. Clearly, these businesses weren't getting the value they thought they would get, but I wonder how much of that was the way they treated the new customers that the groupon generated.
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 think businesses hope that these discount customers will enter cheaply ... but linger to enjoy more of the services and eventually convert into long-term, loyal customers willing to pay full price.
That just doesn't happen. People show up for one quick, cheap engagement, and then they're gone. Once front-line sales people realize this, the desire to welcome Groupon customers evaporates.
There are two culprits in this. One is the Groupon field sales force, for over-promising the business value of getting a flurry of cheap visitors. The other is the target company's senior management, for agreeing to a dumb deal and not working better with the front-line sales/service folks to make a better go of things.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 usi…
> groupon users only ever get the cheapest bottle, if any.
Yeah, because absolutes like this help. Groupon customers can be just like any other customer out there. Some "regular" customers will get cheap wine, some will get an expensive bottle. Similarly, some Groupon customers will get the cheapest wine, others will take the money they saved by getting a Groupon and get the expensive wine. Being a "Groupon customer" might move the needle towards one direction but it's far from absolute the way you're making it out to be.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#146Earlier 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…
This is the same reason why I'm careful which site I book hotel rooms on. Years ago I thought hotels.com was great and convenient, now I realize your experience is tainted from the moment you book with a third party. Now I make every attempt to book direct.
For hotels the majority of bookings come from third party sites. Why would hotels use third party sites regularly if they hate serving customers that book with them?
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#147What is the significance of this line?
"taking a pre-tax charge of $35 million in the process"
It cost them 35 million to lay off 1,100 folks? They are getting a tax cut?
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#148Earlier 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…
This is the same reason why I'm careful which site I book hotel rooms on. Years ago I thought hotels.com was great and convenient, now I realize your experience is tainted from the moment you book with a third party. Now I make every attempt to book direct.
though, hotels often do themselves no favours here. If an aggregator has rooms for $200 a night and the hotel gets 80% of that, you'd think the hotel would take 100% of $200 from a direct booking, but often it'll be $300+... Conceptually, booking direct should be cheaper since the hotel sees all of the money (and users of an aggregator pay for the convenience/discovery/ease factor)
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm sure a lot of people do that, but the appropriate etiquette when using a coupon at a restaurant is to tip on the full price. Most adults who frequent restaurants should know that.
You know that most of the world's population doesn't tip at all? Given that, it seems kind of strange to assume everyone just knows the appropriate tipping etiquette without being told when getting the coupon or sitting down.
Plus the most active users of groupon are probably doing it to save as much money as possible with coupons. They're unlikely to willingly throw away those savings on massive tips... and from what you hear about frequent groupon users they really don't tip the price pre-coupon.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#150I'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…
> A less "grow fast and explode like a Unicorn" business model would probably make it work better for participating businesses.
I know a few more local versions of groupon who went into the game with this game plan. They all failed or pivoted out of it. It seems like a product that can only succeed by going big.