Groupon’s deal seekers have no loyalty

Is Groupon real or is it Boo.com all over again? It’s grown faster than Google, Facebook, Twitter and is going to be worth more than all of them put together if you believe the hype around their planned IPO. But is it real? Everyone who becomes addicted to Groupon’s daily alerts is either a deal seeker or just looking for something unexpected to do.

In many respects it taps into a say yes mentality to the offer of the day no matter how bizarre. Kite flying lessons anyone? Deal seekers wait for the daily offer linked to food and drink usually and plan their attack, take advantage of the partner and never come back. Groupon makes 50% of the voucher and the partner brand hopes to create and retain a customer. In practice how many of these people actually ever come back? How long will it be before partners get tired of this experience and stick to more traditional offers through banks and loyalty schemes? Well on the basis that Groupon now only accepts 1 out of every 8 offers proposed to them there is clearly a significant number of brands willing to brave this new world and suffer the consequences or reap the benefits depending upon your point of view. One things for sure, offer websites like Groupon are not going away….