PayPal, owned by eBay, is going head to head with Groupon and LivingSocial by unveiling a plan to offer coupons to its massive base of 103 million users. With Groupon recently having gone public and hovering a little under it’s IPO price of $25 and holding a market cap of $15B, investors see the daily deals market as a potentially lucrative one. So it’s no surprise that PayPal wants to get in the game.
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Find out what Toronto Business Owner Zane Caplansky says about his experience with deal-of-the-day website Groupon.
The merchants are rather mixed about the discounts and promotions. The primary complaint coming from the merchants is that Daily Deals do not encourage repeat business or increase consumers’ spending.
This turns the popular e-reader into a handheld daily deals platform. Amazon is heading straight into the lion’s lair as a competitor to the kinds of daily deals and flash redemptions iPhone and Android phone users can get through Foursquare and Groupon.
Gaypon is a brand new daily deals site that caters to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community and offers special deals and offers only from businesses that are known to be gay friendly. And the coolest part is, a portion of the proceeds goes to LGBT charities and organizations, helping users save money while helping a good cause.
Groupon general counsel David Schellhase answered Congressional questions concerning his firm. He even disclosed some details of its plan to offer location-based tracking through mobile devices. The disclosure occurred when the largest daily deal company replied on Thursday to questions about its privacy policies.
Alberta believes that the expirations dates may break the province’s consumer protection law. Based on the fact that the deal offered by Groupon expires, the company provides a full refund to the purchaser. By Alberta laws, this isn’t good enough. The government wants Groupon to repay its clients the face value of the card — not the purchase price of the card.
In the U.S. alone, the social shopping platform sold more than four million daily deals during the second quarter (April-June). With those numbers, members in Washington, D.C., California, New York, Texas and Florida were found to appreciate LivingSocial the most, having purchased the most LivingSocial vouchers.
Google will add The Dealmap to its commerce teams with plans to move the company’s employees to its headquarters in Mountain View, California. I don’t think there are any surprises about the acquisition. We all knew Google wanted to bolster their efforts in the local daily deals market. It was only a matter of time and finding the right platform to get the idea in motion.
“This acquisition fundamentally changes the daily deal industry and is a true win for our merchants and consumers alike,” commented Jim Crowley, CEO of BuyWithMe. “The daily deal model is an incredible demand generation tool for merchants, but until today the industry has failed to provide merchants a means to create, manage and measure not just deal results but ongoing customer loyalty, reward and engagement programs post the initial promotion.”
