The Internet Based Business Of Groupon

Groupon is a deal based business that brings customers discounted deals from the businesses. As a result of massive success and the growing competition, the business is faced with the option of either selling to Google or developing an effective marketing strategy for continuing its own. In the due context, the underlying report proposes a marketing plan for successfully dealing with the market challenges (Chatterjee, O”Keeffe, and Streiff, 2012).

Corporate level strategy is best described as an organization making internal changes to differentiate themselves from their competition. Evolving internally allows a company to develop competitive advantages over their competitors along with allowing the company to decipher what makes them unique. Internal changes can include but are not limited to creating a proprietary product or process, reducing costs, and partnering with other organizations. What makes a company unique is more formally referred to as core competency. Together, obtaining core competencies and competitive advantages can elevate an organization and create

Andrew Mason, Founder & CEO of Groupon, had a big idea, but was not aware how massive it could grow. Before Groupon, Mason begun a website called ThePoint.org as a site for collective action, to get groups of people together to solve public and social issues. It wasn’t as effective as he projected, and so started to think of how he could take the group approach of ThePoint.org and turn it into a business channel. Mason believed the Internet had potential to change how people discover and buy from local businesses. That’s when Andrew Mason came up with the excellent concept for Groupon. “Part of Groupon’s success is the simplicity of its business model…” (Kerin & Hartley, p. 110) Groupon offers “Deal of the Day” coupons from local and nationwide

Groupon, Inc. (“Groupon”) is a company that specializes in local commerce. It has relationships with companies on a global scale and alerts consumers on the hottest deals with respect to shopping for various products, travel destinations, and popular spots, goods and services that a city has to offer. The stock ticker for the company on the NASDAQ exchange is “GRPN.” The company is listed under the sector ‘Technology’ and industry ‘Internet Information Providers.’ It started off as ‘ThePoint.com, Inc.’ but in October 2008 it changed its name to ‘Groupon, Inc.” Groupon was founded in 2008 by the now ousted CEO Andrew Mason. The current CEO is Eric Lefkofsky who initially invested $1,000,000 toward the development of the company. The Chief

The three problematic areas that Groupon will face in its future are use and repeat purchases, managing its growth, and high levels of competition. For some of us we by our coupons months in advance and forget to use them which often leaves us dissatisfied about the purchase. Still with its lack of customer loyalty new subscribers are flocking to the website, which has created a demand for continuous expansion of the company’s infrastructure as well as goods and services that it offers. Moreover, the inundation of mobile devices has created some competition. Now anyone with a smartphone can save money on the spot. This has leveraged the competition against Groupon. For example will shopping at Kohls I used a 20% off coupon I found on my phone

A competitive strategy, or business-level strategy, is the way a business used to successfully enter and penetrate into a market (Eastwood et al, 2006), and also, to succeed in this chosen market against its competitors (Johnson et al, 2014). A company needs to develop and apply appropriate strategy to help the company to generate distinctive competences (David, 2007). Compared with the strategies implemented in other levels of operation, competitive strategy is more focused on the competition against other competitors and strategic choices to better attain market share (Harrison and St. John, 2009). According to

Corporate-level strategies are liable for market definition; they address the entire scope of the business. This strategy helps a business to diversify its service. It gives them direction in which geographic region they should operate and which service markets to strive in. “Thus, an effective corporate-level strategy creates, across all of a firm’s businesses, aggregate returns that exceed what those

Groupon creates value through the low costs they offer additionally, through the convenience and the extensive variety of items they provide. Groupons initial value proposition was to enable local organizations to present individuals to their businesses, in this manner enabling organizations to gain future potential customers. The greater part of their income relies upon the quantity of items or deals they sell. Groupon additionally, makes incomes from organizations by means of membership expenses. Moreover, they get a little offer of income from organizations that utilization Groupon's advertisement space. I most likely would not utilize Groupon as an entrepreneur despite the fact that I believe Groupon's plan of action works exceptionally

Groupon’s business model is much different than that of WalMart. WalMart is the largest retailer in the world consisting of physical store entities such as WalMart U.S., WalMart International, and Sam’s Club in addition to it e-commerce sites. Their business model has everything you can think of (shown in Exhibit A), from relations with their supplies to relations with their trade partners. WalMart maintains its mottos of “Always low prices” and “Save money, live better” by focusing a great deal on its suppliers. Because of the size of the company and its continuing needs, WalMart is able to negotiate immensely well with its suppliers to fulfill such a slogan. On the other hand, Groupon is not so much a physical entity as it focuses in the e-commerce industry. To put it in simple terms, Groupon is an online middleman offering discounts for local shops and restaurants. The business model entails Groupon offering discounts at such locations to its customers/subscribers on a

As Groupon is established in many countries of the world, a global strategy has to be pursued

Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website that is localized to major geographic markets worldwide. Launched in November 2008, the first market for Groupon was Chicago, followed soon thereafter by Boston, New York City, and Toronto. Groupon has over 50 million subscribers across 300 cities in more than 40 countries. The idea for Groupon was created by Andrew Mason who is currently the company’s CEO. [update]Groupon serves more than 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America and has amassed 60 million registered users. The growth in the future is likely to be at a slower pace, primarily because the company is already one of the largest in the local deals space.

The five generic competitive strategies are low-cost provider, broad differentiation, focused low-cost, focused differentiation strategy, and best-cost provider strategy. According to the textbook, “a company’s competitive strategy deals exclusively with the specifics of management’s game plan for competing successfully” (Gamble, 93).

I believe that Groupon has become successful for many different reasons. First of all, Groupon was the first to transport the traditional “Coupon clipping” to the online world. This opened many opportunities. It was something new, exciting to consumers that they hadn´t seen in this way. So Groupon had a first mover advantage even though they only connected already existing ideas and technologies in a new way. By being online Groupon could reach many, possibly millions, of people at once. This was a strong argument when Groupon talked to local merchants. As most of these merchants did not have an extensive marketing budget and were not necessarily familiar with new

With the internet technology, everyone can stay at home for online shopping. What’s more, if you can enjoy daily discounts with all the information, home delivery and 24-hours daily operation, that’s all can be found by buying Groupon. Groupon, the company has successfully captured millions of online consumers throughout the world. The marketing strategy of Groupon captures the consumer behavior. Consumer buying behavior, defined as... “The buying behavior of final consumers, individual and households who buy goods and services for personal”.Groupon consumers mainly responses to:

“Competitive strategy involves positioning a business to maximize the value of the capabilities that distinguish it from its competitor’s” (Porter 1980:47). A successful business plan requires first and foremost the formation of an appropriate strategy. Through the implementation of a suitable strategy, the company is able to obtain its own industry niche and gain an understanding of its customers (Porter 1985). Whichever strategy is adopted it must be adequately integrated within the firms goals and missions to achieve a competitive advantage (Parker and Helms 1992).