The rapid spread of group buying enterprises, the industry's drawbacks are also revealed no doubt

Exhausted

Lia Picheux (Lea pische) is a waitress at a pizza parlor, and Edwin Hemavan (Edwin Hermawan) was a lawyer who lived in the Lower East Side of New York. After browsing through the packed information in the Inbox, they finally decided to buy one of them: Skillshare's preferential entrepreneurship course.

What are their business plans? Launch a service to help people unsubscribe from all group buying emails.

The 3-month-old site, which has attracted 7,800 users, has doubled in the last month, unsubscribedeals.com. Picheux and Hemavan Aware of the group buy fatigue once make business quite feel headache of group buy malpractice, now also began to impact consumers.

Groupon, LivingSocial and Google offers, which can bring a bit of value to everyone, have gone by leaps and bounds: businesses get users, consumers get benefits, and group-buying sites take a hefty share.

However, the market is now so exhausted that it raises market concerns: can Groupon and its rivals continue to grow at a high rate?

According to the U.S. group buying industry research company Daily Deal Media statistics, the second half of 2011, the United States a total of 798 group buying sites closed.

When the second-quarter results were released this week, Groupon announced that the number of active users who had participated in Groupon deals in the past year had grown by only 1.1%, well below the previous quarters. According to comscore, the US Internet traffic monitoring agency, although Groupon's traffic was higher than last year's earlier this year, it fell by nearly 10% in May and June compared with 2011.

Groupon's share price has fallen 82% since its IPO last November. The company currently has a market capitalisation of about $3 billion trillion, only half of the takeover offer made by Google in 2010.

Gilt Groupe's group purchase site Gilt City earlier this year even launched layoffs, and closed 6 cities offices. Google offers's users in some cities have stalled, forcing it to work with 35 other group-buying companies to make up for its shortcomings and to help other companies attract users. Facebook and Yelp both entered the area early, but were withdrawn last year. Groupon is looking for other ways to make money, such as buying movie tickets, watches and other goods, and reselling them to consumers.

"Many companies have abandoned or narrowed their goals. "The industry has not entered the threshold, but the success threshold is high," said Jordan Rohan, Nicolaus analyst at the US investment bank Stifel, Jordan Rohan. ”

How to please the Merchant is one of the main barriers. While small businesses are initially heartened by the "post-Yellow Pages" new way of attracting passenger flow, most companies will soon tire of it. Cheap consumers poured into these businesses, but they lost their coupons after spending them.

The status quo in miniature

Portland's Mississippi Avenue has become a microcosm of the current state of the US buying industry. Although the merchant to buy the service more cautious, but the group purchase website salesman is increasing.

Muddy ' s coffeehouse is a Victorian-style restaurant serving coffee and granola oats. The company's package sold for 24 dollars and coffee sold 12 dollars. Muddy's coffeehouse succeeded in attracting passengers, but eventually lost money, after selling the meal at half price.

"I almost need a loan to make up for the damage or we'll have to close the door," he said. "They never reminded us to be prepared for this," said Dyer Price, the restaurant's owner, Dale Plise. I'll never buy again. ”

Not far away Mississippi UBM & Bar Bar is a music bar that also sells burgers and cocktails. The company also took part in Groupon's deal, but the bartender's job slowed a lot because they needed to exchange paper coupons each, and the users attracted by group buying would not come back for the second time.

"It's so boring for us that we count the days and wait for the group to end," he said. Kevin Cradock, the shop owner, said Kevin Cradock. In his opinion, there are better ways to advertise locally. "We're still in the old ways," he said, "We'll print posters and hire people to ride bikes and put up posters." ”

He has also tried Google offers, because Google will provide them with an Android phone to scan coupons, so the process is much simpler. But it also fails to attract repeat customers.

The same scene is also staged elsewhere. 80stees.com a deal through Groupon: $40 in orders of $20 trillion, and 10 dollars to Groupon. The initial results seemed good: 971 coupons were sold and were new users.

But Kevin Stecko, founder of the company, Kevin Steck that an average of 2.96 dollars per order was lost. After that, only 9 people who had been in Groupon bought other products from the site. It is worth mentioning that Steck still made some money, because 14% of the people although bought coupons, but did not exchange.

"Your product has depreciated in my mind. "When it comes to this, Rafi Mohammed, a pricing consultant, said," Users who are attracted by group buying are sensitive to prices and will not come back to buy Laffy Mohammad products. ”

Groupon has provided some tools to help businesses address the most common grievances. For example, the company provides a scheduler to avoid a flood of customers. The company also said that about half of the companies that offered group buying in the past two quarters had previously used Groupon's services.

Annoy customers

But if consumers continue to tire of group buying, all this may be useless.

Tamara Codot, a 47-Year-old Tamara Koedoot, is a real estate agent in Portland, where she spends about 100 dollars a year on 4 group deals each month. But recent events have tested her patience, in part because businesses discriminate against people like her who use coupons.

"As long as they find out you have Groupon coupons, they don't want to deal with you anymore, which annoys me." "she said.

Codot has reduced the number of group buys, also because coupons often expire. For example, she bought a Spanish-language course coupon that expired, and some restaurants were too late to make a reservation, only to watch the coupon expire.

"I must have changed my mind, and I think my friends feel the same way," he said. "The reason we don't buy so many coupons is because it becomes a burden, and it feels like, ' We buy coupons and we have to get them out of the way," she said. ’”

Unsubscribedeals.com has become a boon to consumers who have been tired of buying. Many people even exchange ideas on it.

Some people complain that emails are too frequent and some people worry that the quality is too low. "I once took part in a tooth whitening Groupon," one user said, "I went to that clinic and the receptionist gave me some bleach to get me home." ' If I had to get a dentist to serve me, I'd have to pay another money, ' she said. ”