Groupon’s Success Disaster

at this point groupon has more or less a monopoly so they can easily rape the businesses..

but this article seems to blame groupon instead of the business owner.

1. why would you price your promotion at a loss? 2. losing "$8,000" may sound like a lot...but in reality it should be looked at as $8,000 worth of advertising. And getting your message out to 200,000 or so local customers for that little isn't that bad.

It seemed like the business owner jumped in with a no-holds barred approach as far as discounts were concerned in order to get more feet into the shop. Improper planning, failing to study the market and unrestricted incentives were the points of failure and not Groupon. If anything, they just got a big boost as far as the # of customers was concerned.

Maybe they should have restricted the $ amount or number of coupons given out in the promotion or introduced some conditions instead of just going all out.

Well, the basic economics of giving away too many coupons is definitely the core of the problem, but it looks like Groupon aggravated it somewhat.

By taking a high cut and targeting discount-minded (rather than repeat-custom-minded) clientele, the $8000 basically went down the drain, and the business experienced more headaches dealing with testy Grouponers than they would normal clients.

Part of this is a learning experience about what you offer as a discount, how you offer it, and who you target. Instead of offering half-price cookies, offer half-price vegan cookies or similar. Do a smaller test first (though maybe Groupon doesn't allow that?) so you can get an idea of repeat rates and discount-hungry one-off customers.

The word of mouth gained from this one campaign may well echo forward for months to come, but it's still sad to see a business struggling when a site like Groupon is supposed to be fantastic for both parties involved in the transaction.

The problem isn't Groupon or the shop in question. People were creating multiple Groupon accounts in order to get multiple copies of the offer from this shop. Dishonest consumers are the problem here, though this is a problem that Groupon could do more to curtail.

Who is GlennKelman and why is he/shey only submitting redfin articles and who are redfin and why are the articles deliberately contrarian and who is upvoting them?