<story><title>Groupon, which has lost 99.4% of its value since its IPO, names a new CEO</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/31/groupon-which-has-lost-99-4-of-its-value-since-its-ipo-names-a-new-ceo-based-in-czech-republic/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>newaccount74</author><text>Groupon felt a bit like a multi-level-marketing scheme to me. They hired lots and lots of sales people, whose job it was to convince unsuspecting businesses to offer a groupon.&lt;p&gt;A restaurant owner I worked with agreed to run a Groupon. They offered a 40€ dinner for two at a 50% discount for 20€. That was already a fantastic deal. But Groupon took 50%, so the restaurant owner got only 10€ per sale. They sold a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of them.&lt;p&gt;The Groupon sales person promised them that this would be great advertising, that people would bring their friends, and that they could sell fancy drinks and cocktails to the guests, so they would make a lot of money.&lt;p&gt;So over the next 6 months or so, every day a few people would show up, redeem their Groupon to get their 40€ meal, order no drinks, and never come back again.&lt;p&gt;It was a really shitty deal for the restaurant, but it was a fantastic deal for groupon -- they got a 50% cut for selling a ridiculously cheap meal.&lt;p&gt;Of course, no business owner in their right mind would ever agree to such a crappy deal a second time. So the success of Groupon was based on finding new, unsuspecting businesses who could be talked into offering such a sweet deal.&lt;p&gt;In the beginning, with all the hype, that was an easy task. So they saw huge growth at the beginning. But it wasn&amp;#x27;t sustainable growth. Groupon was exploiting hapless business owners that haven&amp;#x27;t yet been burned by sleazy marketers.&lt;p&gt;As soon as the too-good-to-be-true deals became less frequent, Groupons customers also started leaving.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand how anybody who knew anything about the business could think that this was sustainable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>88913527</author><text>Price-conscious consumers will absolutely take a good deal but build no brand loyalty. They&amp;#x27;ll hop from sale to sale. Businesses live and die by customer acquisition costs. You&amp;#x27;re better off offering deals to customers who&amp;#x27;ve already demonstrated a willingness to pay near-MSRP regularly, and offer deals if they start dropping off, to get them buying again.&lt;p&gt;Groupon just proved, at a larger scale, what was always present in consumer behavior. Of course it wasn&amp;#x27;t going to be sustainable just like click-through rates for ads dropped off once people got used to their placement at a particular location in the search results. In this case, Groupon capitalized on small-business owners who had a poor grasp of how consumers work.</text></comment>
<story><title>Groupon, which has lost 99.4% of its value since its IPO, names a new CEO</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/31/groupon-which-has-lost-99-4-of-its-value-since-its-ipo-names-a-new-ceo-based-in-czech-republic/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>newaccount74</author><text>Groupon felt a bit like a multi-level-marketing scheme to me. They hired lots and lots of sales people, whose job it was to convince unsuspecting businesses to offer a groupon.&lt;p&gt;A restaurant owner I worked with agreed to run a Groupon. They offered a 40€ dinner for two at a 50% discount for 20€. That was already a fantastic deal. But Groupon took 50%, so the restaurant owner got only 10€ per sale. They sold a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of them.&lt;p&gt;The Groupon sales person promised them that this would be great advertising, that people would bring their friends, and that they could sell fancy drinks and cocktails to the guests, so they would make a lot of money.&lt;p&gt;So over the next 6 months or so, every day a few people would show up, redeem their Groupon to get their 40€ meal, order no drinks, and never come back again.&lt;p&gt;It was a really shitty deal for the restaurant, but it was a fantastic deal for groupon -- they got a 50% cut for selling a ridiculously cheap meal.&lt;p&gt;Of course, no business owner in their right mind would ever agree to such a crappy deal a second time. So the success of Groupon was based on finding new, unsuspecting businesses who could be talked into offering such a sweet deal.&lt;p&gt;In the beginning, with all the hype, that was an easy task. So they saw huge growth at the beginning. But it wasn&amp;#x27;t sustainable growth. Groupon was exploiting hapless business owners that haven&amp;#x27;t yet been burned by sleazy marketers.&lt;p&gt;As soon as the too-good-to-be-true deals became less frequent, Groupons customers also started leaving.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand how anybody who knew anything about the business could think that this was sustainable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saiya-jin</author><text>There are many variants out there, ie what we have here in Switzerland (buyclub, mostly Geneva) has mandatory drink per person, 5$ minimum, and also usually discount is often 40% and not 50%, no cashback. When we use it we always paid quite a bit on top already-paid discount, happily (starters, cakes, drinks, coffee all ads up). Often same places keep reappearing on the offer, so it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be bad deal for them. Deals don&amp;#x27;t come very frequently, have strict limit on total coupons count (ie 200, 500), how many per user, timeout etc.&lt;p&gt;Another variant of the concept is ie La fourchette (the fork), where you can get similar deals, but they are either permanent deals or stay around for longer, so if you don&amp;#x27;t have anything specific in mind you just search what is available around. Similar rules for drinks.</text></comment>