Chapter 5: Attracting Customers with Daily Deal Coupons
In This Chapter
Gaining customers by offering savings
Learning about Groupon and Living Social
Sharpening your edge with local daily deal sites
Covering your back
A group of friends “hitting the mall” is the offline definition of social shopping. Online, though, social shopping means something quite different: An entire group of folks (sometimes, strangers) saves money by volume buying with a “group” coupon. The group coupon emerged several years ago as a way to aggregate new buyers, usually in specific cities, by offering a half-off, one-day promotion online or by e-mail. The underlying assumption was that by attracting a high volume of customers, a business could still make money on a highly discounted deal, “buy” goodwill and exposure, or fill their businesses during off-times or off-season.
The best-known and oldest of these coupon services are Groupon (www.groupon.com
), which went public in fall 2011, and LivingSocial (www. livingsocial.com
). Both companies have expanded to offer specific, tourism-related deals, as well ...
