Groupon, like all great ideas, manages to fill a void you become so accustomed to using, that you wonder how you ever lived without it. I for one have been an avid Groupon user since its launch. Having bought several Groupons myself, from restaurants, to spas, and even to the dentist, it has become a guilty pleasure. As with many great ideas, the first to enter the market usually manages to capture a strong and loyal base. While numerous competitors have popped up and tried to jump on Groupon's caboose, I firmly believe Groupon has maintained its customer base. I am subscribed to each of their competitors daily deals, and receive about 5-6 emails aside Groupon's daily email. While the idea is the same, the execution is not, and the consistency is not. Groupon never fails, while their competitors will sometimes have the same deal up for days, or not manage to attract the quality of deals Groupon has managed to attain. Groupon's tactics have also been remarkable, as they consistently send out Groupon bucks, between $5 and $10 to be used towards your future Groupon purchases, thus keeping you hooked on finding your next discounted fix and coming back to the site over and over again. Just take a look at Facebook, what did we do without it? While the concept has been replicated by a plethora of other websites, we simply don't care, our loyalty, our attention, and our credibility is all spent on Facebook. Why? Because Facebook is what we knew first, it introduced us to the concept, we loved it....why leave it for a copycat. Copycats may work across numerous other industries, such as retail, but when it comes to innovate web-executed ideas, the first to pop up is usually what sticks. A similar concept can be observed with Apple. How many versions of an mp3 player came out since Apple released its ipod, yet Apple came up with it, they innovated it, they maintained it and remained committed to it and improving quality of features for its users--why leave it for a copycat? With innovation comes trust. We trust Apple. Similar to Groupon, they came up with an innovation, stuck to it, developed it, and have remained committed to their fanbase. Livingsocial.com, gottahalfit.com, and dailydeal.com, are all great websites, they all do the same thing, yet they lack that "cool" factor that the first in the market always manage to attain. They lack Groupon's "cool" feature. It became an accomplishment for Groupon to turn using coupons into something trendy. Quite the feat.
As Sam Diaz states in his article http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/groupons-11-million-gap-day-a-business-winner-or-loser/38259, Groupon is not only great for users such as myself, it is an immensely valuable tool for businesses, from small businesses, to those such as the Gap, Nordstrom Rack, and American Apparel who have all turned to Groupon. While you may wonder why such large retailers would need to use Groupon to promote sales, Groupon's effects expand well beyond the sales arena. Groupon, because of its cool factor, gets you talking. It brings companies word of mouth (I must have mentioned last week's Nordstrom Rack deal to at least 10 of my friends), it gets you to spend money on things you otherwise would not have bought, didnt need, or just wouldnt have splurged to treat yourself with (such as massages for $39 instead of $109), its great advertising, great brand exposure, great company exposure, and its immediate cash to the business, unlike gift cards where the values are not redeemed until the customer has spent the gift card.
As you can see, I love this website. It's great, it's fun, it's addictive, it's creative, it's trendy, it's smart, and the idea is so great, yet so simple that you wish you would have thought of it, or at some point wonder how you didn't....just another quality of what truly is a great idea!
