Group buy

Group buying officially introduced to people’s daily life by the legend of group buying business-Groupon. Groupon started its business at October 2008 and extended to be the giant business with international business operation. It is preparing for a $25 billion IPO in 2011.

The idea behind Groupon is very simple: providing the best deal possible to the customers by negotiating price with vendors as a group of buyers. It is a great idea that lead to a win-win situation. At the same time, it is a simple idea that is very easy to be copied. Therefore, it is not surprise to see that there are many competitors in this area and giant companies want to share the market as well.

Currently, there is Groupon, LivingSocial, and other smaller local group buying websites. Also, Yelp started to provide deals on its website in associating with its users’ reviews of deal providers.

FaceBook touched group buying area as well based on its huge loyal user base.

In addition, after Groupon turned down Google’s 3.5 millions offer, Google launched its own featured local coupon service. It provides mobile access.

Reviewing all those group buying business, there are a couple of new trends that help the company survival in the competition.

1. Provide the best deal possible. The center of the group buying is to provide the best deal to customers and biggest size of customers to vendors. Therefore, as important as good content to a website, finding and negotiating great deals are critical for any group buying business.

2. Customized newsletter. Nowadays, people receive tons of subtracted emails everyday.  They are easily to get tired of useless information. Depending on customers’ buying history and basic information provided, it is more effective to provide personalized relative deals, which will keep customers interested.

3. Being convenient is the significant important as well. As a daily functional information provider, the first thing is to be helpful and accessible. No matter Google providing mobile access or Yelp associating reviews with deals, those are all about offering customers the best and the most convenient service ever.

So what’s the next generation of group buying business model? Will a product that combines all the functions possibly offered by current group buying businesses be a good idea?