31–40 of 56 posts
How many thousands of companies have spent a combined hundreds of millions of dollars on Google AdWords and not ever made their money back? That isn't Google's fault and this isn't Groupon's.
It certainly isn't Groupon's fault - but if merchants regularly have negative ROI on this sort of scheme Groupon's days would be numbered...
I do not get it. So groupon responds with some marketing spiel about how their offering have worked for a number of businesses, and like he say some corporate BS about win-win. Nothing about speaking to the specific small business owners that got it wrong by using groupon and what groupon has done to prevent other small business owners from failing in the same manner. How groupon has extended or enhanced their offeri…
Well, here's some things you apparently missed:
>Of course, we have heard from merchants who felt Groupon sent them too many customers. We responded to those concerns by creating merchant preparation materials, including this video featuring a Groupon merchant who sold 10,000 bagel Groupons in a day:
and
>Also, to clarify one important point: it has always been Groupon policy to allow merchants to cap deals. If a merchant sells too many Groupons, they’ll have a bad experience, the customer will have a bad experience, and therefore, Groupon loses. We’re longer-term thinkers than that. In fact, we have the opposite problem more often – where merchants protest a cap we recommend, convinced they can handle more customers than we think they can.
and
>Now that we know Posie’s had a problem, we have reached out to them so we can help.
So they didn't specifically mention talking to the 3% that didn't want to do it again, but they most certainly did address the other concerns you raised.
Smart of them to respond quickly and swiftly, but the core issue of this specific case wasn't addressed. A naive business owner was aggressively sold into a plan that wasn't sustainable for their business, and by all accounts wasn't aware of the cap system which Andrew says "has always been Groupon policy to allow merchants" to have. So the PR responses read wells to people who have already decided Groupon did no wro…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Must be some kind of miscommunication . . . I doubt either are lying about their perception of the situation.
A wild guess: Groupon gives a better deal to businesses without a cap, or with high caps. Or, if you set your cap too low, you never get your 'day' because you're stuck waiting behind other businesses that offer more juice to Groupon. That's fair, though it may tempt small businesses with only a rudimentary understanding of their own margins to over-market.
Smart of them to respond quickly and swiftly, but the core issue of this specific case wasn't addressed. A naive business owner was aggressively sold into a plan that wasn't sustainable for their business, and by all accounts wasn't aware of the cap system which Andrew says "has always been Groupon policy to allow merchants" to have. So the PR responses read wells to people who have already decided Groupon did no wro…
I agree with you here. However, as someone who has been on the ad sales side of the equation, I can tell you that all sales are emotional and the more time you spend explaining to people how to properly price out the product the less likely they are to buy. Literally the more rational you make it for the person to buy your product the less likely they are to actually buy it, because the rational part of the brain isn't the part of the brain that buys stuff.
In addition, I'd argue that what makes advertising not-unethical is that the vast majority of businesses lose money on any given ad buy. If advertising was just a license to print money for all businesses instead of, say, the best 5% of businesses then it would be pretty hard to argue that advertising was making the world a better place. While Groupon may well have been at fault here, the small business owner does have some responsibility to understand how advertising works, what the best practices are, what asset they are trying to build, etc. If the business owner in question understood this then it wouldn't really matter that they didn't understand every last feature on the site. It sounds like her real problem was that the people coming into her store didn't like her stuff; the fact that she was losing money on every sale would have been a non-issue to begin with if this weren't true.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Must be some kind of miscommunication . . . I doubt either are lying about their perception of the situation.
I'm gonna sound cynical here, but why do you think that? People in business lie all the time to cover their butts or prevent embarrassment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on all the published words of Lucinda it seems clear to me that she is essentially incompetent. Groupon is just one type of rope that she used to hang herself. But not the only rope by any means. Having said that, of course it is in Groupon's best interest to avoid doing business in those kinds of situations. Pretty frightening PR for them.
What proof do you have of Lucinda's incompetence? I must admit I'm curious as to how you came to that conclusion (even if it's little hints in the article, here and there).
1. She didn't see this coming. Apparently she has no instinct for due diligence.
2. The way she handled one of her best customers, Lucinda. This woman does not seem to understand the most basic principles of successfully running a small business.
I've seen Jessie make essentially 2 business decisions and both have been horrendously embarrassingly bad.
They're right. Where this went off the rails was whatever process that convinced a coffee shop to invest in Groupons when they were so close to the edge that missing their number by a couple thousand dollars caused them to miss payroll.
I'm not a believer in any press is good press, but I don't think this will be bad for groupon. The story made me say, wow, look at the numbers of people they get through the door. So many that it nearly sunk a little business - it's so successful that it's actually scary for a business. Groupon's excellent response here helps make the message positive as well.
I'm sure it's way way higher than a coupon printed in a paper or offered online, but there has to be a certain % that don't get (or forget) to use the coupon before the expiration date and the business benefits outright.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Must be some kind of miscommunication . . . I doubt either are lying about their perception of the situation.
I'm gonna sound cynical here, but why do you think that? People in business lie all the time to cover their butts or prevent embarrassment.