We’ve compiled a list of five social shopping services that you’ve never heard of, so you can get a taste of the variety of ways you can buy online.
5 Web Shopping Services That Shopaholics Need To Know
Posts Tagged ‘group buying’
The Complete Guide to Social Shopping
With all of the new ways to shop online cropping up over the past year or two, it can be difficult to sort through the best deals for your money. We take a look at all of the different types of social shopping available on and off the web, so you can become an e-commerce 3.0 expert.
LivingSocial Brings Urban Adventures to its 10 Million Members
While 70% off spa packages and half off dinners are nice, daily deals heavyweight LivingSocial has announced today a new type of deal it’s offering to its 10 million members – urban adventures. This is a result of LivingSocial’s acquisition of Urban Escapes, a social adventure company, and it signals that LivingSocial is stepping up its efforts to surpass Groupon as the number-one daily deals site on the web – efforts that appear to be paying off.
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Study: Groupon Great for Consumers, Businesses Not So Much
Cut-rate deals offered by group buying startups such as Groupon are great for consumers: Half off lattes and airbrush tanning sessions? Count me in. But a new study claims that the group buying phenomenon is not quite the panacea for participating businesses.
Nearly a third (32%) of the 150 businesses surveyed for a study (pdf) by Rice University said that the Groupon campaigns they ran were unprofitable.
Those with unprofitable campaigns also said their Groupon customers didn’t spend much beyond the offered deal, and very few were converted into regular customers when compared to the other two thirds (66%) who ran profitable Groupon offers.
We recently reported the story of a small cafe owner in Portland, Ore., who claimed she lost $8,000 on a Groupon campaign.
Surprisingly, despite the group buying scheme’s consumer focus, the success or failure of a Groupon campaign hinged on the satisfaction of a participating business’s employees.
“This was completely unexpected. Customer satisfaction is often driven by employee satisfaction. When you have satisfied employees the customers are more satisfied, and there’s a greater chance that they will come back, which is the whole point of a campaign like this,” said Utpal M. Dholakia, the study’s author and associate professor of marketing at Rice.
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LivingSocial Expands into 25 New Markets in 3 Countries
In an effort to take the top spot in the thriving group buying space, LivingSocial has expanded its daily discounts into 25 new markets across 3 countries. This places LivingSocial only a handful of markets away from its biggest competitor, Groupon. With LivingSocial expanding into an average of one market per day since July, it’s clear that the company wants to overtake Groupon and become the leading provider of discounted meals, spa treatments and cupcakes across the US and beyond. Read below the jump to see if LivingSocial has expanded into your area.
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Ready to Give up Your Consumer Data in Exchange for Bargain Deals?
We’ve had it hammered into our heads that our consumer data – where we shop, what we buy, how much we spend – should be guarded with, if not our lives, then at least every password encryption tool in our arsenals. But what if this consumer data could be harnessed to benefit both retailers and ourselves, giving us discounts on products we want, without compromising our privacy? That’s the thinking behind soon-to-be-launched WeShop, a collective shopping experience that uses aggregate consumer data to get you bargain deals on your favorite products.
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Daily Deals Site Wrazz Brings Social Networking and Social Commerce Together
Group buying, social commerce, daily deals… whatever you call it, the latest social coupon phenomenon to hit the web has one more competitor amongst its ranks: Seattle-based Wrazz. This new startup, set to launch on August 6th, certainly has its work cut out for it. With giants like Groupon and LivingSocial already rooted in many large markets and expanding into new cities regularly, it will be an uphill battle to offer bigger, better deals to entice online shoppers to use its service.
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Groupon Launches G-Team Service To Raise Funds for Charities
Groupon is a daily group-buying service that allows users to sign up for daily deals and if enough people join up, the group gets the usually major savings. They’ve taken their formula and now launched G-Team, which allows groups to now connect with local fundraisers, campaigns and charitable causes. As a user, this means that when you see your daily deal, you’ll now also see a related charity cause when appropriate, and you’ll have a chance to help somebody in need.
LivingSocial Expands into 25 New Cities, Including Miami, Las Vegas, Toronto
LivingSocial, one of the leading group coupon providers, is expanding its offerings into 25 new cities, bringing their reach up to 52 cities. These cities include Toronto and Vancouver, Living Social’s first foray into Canada, and several others in the US and the UK. In just its first year of operations, Living Social is seeing organic growth that could threaten the market leader, Groupon.
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LivingSocial Raises $14 Million Six Weeks After Raising $25 Million
LivingSocial, one of the best organizational list tools on Facebook, has raised $14 million just six weeks after they closed $25 million in funds. The application has long served a niche for connecting people with similar interests and helping them connect to the products they like, and with this new investment we can see that LivingSocial has a rapidly growing valuation. Are group buying sites and applications like LivingSocial the next hot Facebook trend?
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