Groupon Executive Summary

Groupon, the name itself, was derived from the combination of words: “Group” and “Coupon.” It was started from an online community with collective action named as The Pointe. The idea mainly was to support social campaigns that later changed to arranging deals on the site for local merchants who shared a part of the revenue with the company. The two initial objectives were to concentrate on the local merchants and to promote a single deal per day to attract the consumers and manage the minimum scale of operations. Starting off with a mailing list of 500 consumers the company had grown to 60,000 consumers in its first 6 months and ran more than 100 deals on the websites.

Marketing Strategy: Groupon had to cross through a number of critics as it was a non-technology company, no product company, and no barriers of entry yet was a fast growing company in the market. The marketing strategy applied by the company is that of the first-mover advantage. The idea of offering something different and easily

Rather than spending money on the marketing services, the listing of deals from major companies has given indirect advertising advantage to the company. Deals from companies like Gap, American Apparel, Virgin America, Nordstorm Rack and Barnes & Noble have been major hits for the company by attracting a major consumer group and increasing awareness. In the initial stages, Groupon awareness was mainly through word of mouth, other old school methods of referral bonus, and reward for signing up. However, the company did concentrate on the minor details necessary to attract the customers; like the editorial staff that listed every deal with a catchy description and also gave the necessary details. The interface created was simple and was attractive to all generations who could toggle around the site with minimum