E-Business Model and Strategy - Groupon - Group11
E-Business Model and Strategy - Groupon - Group11
E-Business Model and Strategy - Groupon - Group11
Assignment 2
e-Business
Business Model and Strategy
Group 11
1. Key Functionalities
a) Communication functionalities
On the website of Groupon, we will not find any links to other similar companies. A major drawback
of the website is the fact that it is easy to imitate. In North America, there are 200 sites similar to
Groupon some copying the look of its site, font and logo. That’s why the company doesn’t want to
promote others websites. The success of Groupon, concerning its communication, is directly
associated with its business. To buy something on the website a certain number of people has to sign
up for the offer which is presented on the website. If the minimum number of purchases is reached,
all buyers who have emerged get the product, if the minimum is not reached, no one gets the
product. In order to get the product they want to purchase, the costumers send the offer to their
friends. That way the costumers promote indirectly the website of Groupon. The costumers can also
follow the group on the various websites of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
b) Commercial functionalities
Groupon displays an offer of products a day in each market it serves. The offer shows a product with
a discount from 50 to 90%. The offer is posted on the website of Groupon and is send by e-mail to all
the members who have registered on this site. The offer states: a detailed description of the product
which is offered, its regular price, the discount offered by the supplier, the price after the discount,
saving realised on the product and the minimum number of products which has to be purchased so
that that deal could be concluded. On the website, the buyers also can get acquainted with the
method of payment. They can pay with their credit cards and security is guaranteed.
c) Cultural functionalities
On the website of Groupon, the costumers can find and buy all kind of tickets which give them access
to different cinemas, theatres, operas, festivals and music concerts. The information about theses
events are naturally available on the website.
d) Copyright functionalities
Everything located on the website is the exclusive property of Groupon, Inc. or used with express
permission of the copyright and/or trademark owner. Consequently, any coping, distributing,
transmitting, posting, linking, deep linking, or otherwise modifying of the site without the express
written permission of Groupon, Inc. is strictly prohibited. Any violation of this policy may lead to a
copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right infringement that would expose the User to
civil and/or criminal penalties.
e) Security functionalities
Groupon takes security seriously and take numerous precautions to protect the security of Personally
Identifiable Information. The customers can access their Personally Identifiable Information on the
Website through a password and their email address. This password is encrypted. In addition,
Personally Identifiable Information on the customers resides on a secure server that only selected
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personnel and contractors have access to. They encrypt certain sensitive information (such as credit
card information) using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to ensure that Personally Identifiable
Information is safe.
Number of unique visitors per month Nearly 11.2M unique visitors a month in the US
in 2010.
Number of subscribers Over 50M total subscribers across over 300 cities
in more than 40 countries.
Groupon’s business key success has been its strong partnership that it creates with local businesses.
Groupon enters new markets by looking for the local market and identifying successful local
businesses. Groupon sales personnel then approach local businesses and try to establish partnership
with the local business.
1
NEXTUP, Nextup Research Report, in Sharepost.com, adresse URL:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48117058/Sharespost-Groupon-Research-Report (page viewed the 20th of March
2011)
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Groupon is best suited for high fixed cost businesses and business where the customer acquisition
cost is very high. Groupon is also best suited for businesses thriving on repeat customers such as spas
and restaurants.
4. Business model
Groupon’s business model is easy to copy, barriers to entry for the local deal market and switching
costs for consumers and local businesses are low. There are about 500 firms worldwide (200 firms in
US alone) which have started to emulate Groupon’s success.
Consumers subscribe with Groupon and receive deals through emails. Consumers can also see deals
in the Groupon website. Groupon performs research of the local market and identifies the successful
local businesses. Groupon sales personnel approach local businesses with outstanding reviews, and
establish partnership with the local business. Groupon features deals involving products/services
offered by local businesses in some selected locales based on the target consumer base. When a
minimum number of users subscribe to the deal, the deal becomes active. The deal is generally
available for a few days and the deal becomes inactive if the critical subscription is not reached.
Consumers pay Groupon by purchasing the deal.
Groupon pays the local businesses after taking a 40%-50% share of the revenue generated by the
deal. Consumers then redeem coupons with local businesses and receive discounts.
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- Key Partners: The Point platform (even though now Groupon acts independently)
- Key Activities: Offers discounts on various products and services from other companies
- Key Resources: Physical: Internet, servers ; Intellectual: brand name
- Value Propositions (Offer): Promotes products or services with significantly discounted
prices
- Customer Relationships: Self-Service : customers has the liberty to choose the product or
service that suits his needs
- Channels: Website, mails to customers
- Customer Segments: Mass Market
- Cost Structure: Point-of-sale structure through the internet
- Revenues Streams: If enough customers enter into a deal
a) Product innovation
Groupon doesn’t distinguish itself from competitors by its products but rather by the manner with
which it sells its products and services. Indeed, Groupon is a platform offering promotional geo
located products and services. All types of products and services are thus sold by Groupon.
Value proposition: The big advantage is that Groupon only makes promotional offers for which the
price decreases from 50 to 90% overall. In addition to that, the frequency of of the offers makes the
site very attractive. Indeed, Groupon committed to providing a "good deal" by city and by day.
Target customer: Originally Groupon had young women as main target, hence the offer more
focused on health and beauty. However, Groupon has expanded its offer. Thus its business
model intends to reach as much people as possible; ordinary people but also companies for example.
Capabilities: The Groupon system has no limits: it does not need space to store goods and deals
may be concluded with suppliers of all types of products and services.
b) Customer relationship
Information strategy: The platform provides no information unless you gave your e-mail address: it's
an aggressive recruiting strategy. In addition, advertising outside of the site is also aggressive,
making unrealistic promises (false advertising).
Feel & Serve: Groupon run its activities and offers its services only through its website.
Trust & Loyalty: Given the deals offered by the site, and the economic concept surrounding its
creation, Groupon’s reputation has grown rapidly. The word Groupon is now a familiar name
associated to “cuts” or “good deals”.
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c) Infrastructure Management
Activity configuration: Groupon firstly sends employees to research the local market and find a
business with outstanding reviews. Then, the company uses social marketing sites such as Facebook
and Twitter, but also promotes through applications on iPhone and Android-based mobiles to
promote the idea. Their promotional texts contribute to the popularity of the site.
Partner network: The number of subscribers has continuously increased since the creation of the
website. Nowadays, the site has more than 50M total subscribers in more the 40 countries
worldwide. Besides, the company has developed partnerships with several companies in order to
provide a range of services to the merchants who choose to advertise Groupon Deals such as
“TransNational” (payment processing) and “Speakeasy” (voice and data communications).
Resources: The main resources of Groupon are its 3100 employees and the computers and the locals
and its reputation.
Financials
Revenue Model: Groupon earnings come by keeping approximately half the money the person pays
for the coupon. The commissions depend on the discounted deal prices and the deal categories of
the offers. In 2009, Groupon has developed an e-commerce platform: Groupon Store. A new offer
can be started for free. Nevertheless, when a deal is reached, a commission of 30% (on deals
promoted by Groupon) or 10% (on deals promoted by the merchants themselves) is charged by
Groupon. The revenues in 2010 were $600M and the estimated revenue in 2010 will achieve $920M.
Cost structure: The costs consist mainly in the exploration of business with outstanding reviews and
the promotional costs.
Profit Model: Since the system of commission represents the major part of the incomes of Groupon,
the company’s growth depends essentially on the number of deals. Groupon can reach this objective
by increasing the number of subscribers and the numbers of partnerships with small businesses by
exploring new markets such as China.
Relationship • Groupon
• The businesses
Data • Groupon
• The businesses
Transaction • Groupon
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Goupon
Customers Businesses
In this way, the companies contracting with Groupon are the first complementors and the ones being
in contact with the clients. The supplementors are the competitors that are copying on Groupon’s
business model and developing the same business.
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Website: www.groupon.com
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c) Market segments
The following graphs offer statistics regarding the subscribers: they are mostly young single women
that are educated and work for good revenues.
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On the other side, Groupon is looking for companies that are willing to be known and to expand or
the ones willing to develop internationally.
d) Channels
On the first hand, the channels used to reach the clients are characterized by both a substitution
effect and an extension effect. Indeed, buying through Internet is a new way to make his shopping,
but moreover, the Groupon offers allow discounts and less travelling.
On the other hand, the businesses are contacting Groupon to work with the company and are helped
to clinch a deal. The delivery is executed by and in charge of the supplier.
e) Activities to perform
Groupon needs to reach its subscribers and attract new ones in order to raise a minimum amount of
customers interested in the same product. Simultaneously, it needs to perform well in order to have
recognition and respect from contracting companies and attract new ones.
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gathering people searching for the same project or product. However Groupon was a side project of
The Point at the beginning, it is now independent.
g) Partners
The partners, being essentially the companies co-contracting, are very diversified going from the
cloths brand GAP to the events NHL and NBA and the digital payment platform MASTERCARD. Lots of
other companies have also worked with Groupon and most of them are quite satisfied with the
services of Groupon even though there are more and more studies that nuance this affirmation3.
h) Competitor
The business model of the company Groupon is a weak point for the company since it can be easily
copied. Therefore, many companies are using the Groupon model to launch a business. Among them,
the heaviest competitor is LivingSocial followed by Coupons, BuyWithMe, Ideeli, Yelp, Jasmere.com,
Groop Swoop, TownHog, and eWinWin.
i) Revenue sources
From the price charged to the subscribers for the voucher, half of it is returned to the company
Groupon.
j) Pricing strategy
Groupon has as strategy, to reduce the market price at least by half in order to attract the customers
on the different groupons. Moreover, in order to dismiss the rivals, Groupon has created the
“Groupon Merchant Partner program that guarantees businesses a certain number of voucher slots
per year if they agree not to work with Groupon competitors.”4
k) Conclusion
In order to conclude, Groupon is the largest player in the emerging local deals market with more
than 60% of the shares. The company has more than 50 million subscribers spread in 300 cities
worldwide. The other players are LivingSocial, Coupons, Ideeli, BuyWithMe and Yelp. We note that
there is a significant competition from LivingSocial that has raised funds and is likely to expand.
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Groupon has about $1B in revenue. Now their business model is based on simplicity. They pay out
50% of that to their partners who offer the discounts – and the remainder of the company cost is in
sales. If you look at a typical media company at scale – they tend to run about 20% of sales as costs
(incremental margins on the extra $ of revenue is over 80% often) – so on $1B of revenue you have
$200M of costs. Since most of the Groupon employees are either sellers or administrative people
doing the “paper work” for the deals, there is thus not a mass of cutting-edge technology required
nor tremendous database necessities or server needs – one can assume that the cost structure is not
going to get too far beyond the SGA line.
My guess is that Groupon is doing $1B in revenue – $500M in Cost of Good Sold, $200M in SGA and
perhaps another $50M in miscellaneous costs (real estate – exec salaries, the cost of ramping up
ahead of revenue etc…) – for a total of $250M in EBITDA.
So Google offers $6B for $250M in EBITDA – 24X which seems like a large number – but if EBITDA is
scalable and growing extremely fast (over 100% per year right now) – then the 24X becomes 12X in a
year and 6X in 2 years – which seems like a pretty good deal for Google – and is probably one of the
reasons why Groupon decided to remain private.
Now in order to reach that conclusion, you also have to believe that Groupon will continue to take an
increasing share of the local advertising market – particularly the promotional budgets and marketing
budgets of the local advertisers.
It has been written that Groupon has cracked the local problem – and that all of the $100B per year
or more that is spent locally is open to them. Perhaps, but I think it is instructive to disaggregate that
market a little bit and see just who is using Groupon.
As a store owner – if I choose to use Groupon, I am offering a 50% discount generally – and Groupon
is taking 50% of the offer price – so in essence, my net is 25% of the retail price. The question is, who
can afford to offer 75% off on a regular basis?
1. Companies with extremely fixed costs, high marginal profit levels, perishable inventory and
incremental capacity. Say you own a spa. The overhead is completely fixed and you are paying the
workers to be there – so incremental margins are high. You can imagine that the margins on
cupcakes are very high.
2. Companies looking to lose money in order to convert customers into regular paying customers.
Businesses willing to spend money to acquire users. In most media businesses this is called SAC
(subscriber acquisition costs) or CPGA (cost per gross add). The issue with these costs are that you
have to know very well what the lifetime value of the customer is in order to price these properly.
Now let’s look at the local advertising market. If you take a look at the revenues of typical local
advertisers it consists of car dealers, chain restaurants, bars and grills, retail stores, electronics
chains, supermarkets, etc… What you realize looking at the list is that most of these businesses
operate in extremely competitive environments with margins that are razor thin at best. Car dealers
are in no position to use Groupon – nor are clothing stores, electronics chains, supermarkets etc…
The margins for these businesses are too low – and they already spend a lot of marketing dollars
branding themselves.
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The Cost (Loss-making) Mechanics of Groupon
Promotions cost money. It goes without saying that a business engages in promotions if it provides
some significant long-term benefit. But, what if a promotion does not provide any significant benefit?
A good example is businesses teaming up with popular coupon sites like Groupon or Living Social to
drive store traffic via discount coupons.
Let’s assume that the business in question – a restaurant – offers a Sunday brunch for $16. If they
partner with Groupon, the deal would have to be priced at $8. Sale price of Promoted Product: $8
($16 Sunday brunch on sale for $8 through Groupon)
Product costs:
• Raw Materials
• Labor
• Packaging
• Promotional expenses
• Insurance
• Rent
• Utilities
• Delivery
One way of pricing this is to take all the costs into consideration and apportion them to the overall
sales of the promoted product within the portfolio. So, if the product is a buffet lunch, you have to
allocate the costs of all the above to determine profitability.
The competitive strategy should be based on a strong understanding of the industry structure and
how it may possibly change. In the online world, this principle does apply even though in a slightly
different way.
Profitable markets that yield high returns will attract new firms. This results in many new entrants,
which eventually will decrease profitability for all firms in the industry. Unless the entry of new firms
can be blocked by incumbents, the abnormal profit rate will fall towards zero.
Entry of larger players such as Facebook (Facebook Deals) and Google (Google Offers) could also pose
significant competition to Groupon in the future.
Google prepares a new product to help potential customers find big deals in the area where they live,
sending a daily email". Google Offers follows the same mechanics that the two main representatives
of the segment, Groupon and LivingSocial. It offers the deal of the day, and if it meets the number of
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people who accepted the offer, it is specific and can enjoy the discount. Moreover, Google tried to
buy Groupon by $ 6 billion to strengthen its local advertising business. Groupon rejected the offer
and is instead preparing to launch an IPO (Initial Public Offering) worth $ 15 billion.
For most industries, the intensity of competitive rivalry is the major determinant of the
competitiveness of the industry.
Worldwide, there are over 500 similar sites including over 200 in US. Groupon is the largest player in
the emerging local deals market, in our estimate, with more than 60% share. The company has more
than over 50M total subscribers and offers deals in more than 300 cities worldwide, dwarfing the
other players.
Groupon faces competition from LivingSocial which is rapidly expanding to all cities in which Groupon
is offering deals, in December 2010 LivingSocial has been the most serious competitor. Groupon
could also face competition from players in the local review & search space such as Yelp, which has
started offering deals.
- LivingSocial:
Founded in 2007, LivingSocial is a social discovery and cataloging network that connects users
with their interests. LivingSocial's social applications enable more than 85M users to catalog,
review, share and buy their favorite items.
LivingSocial is a strong number two in the local deals market after Groupon, and in some regional
markets, an even bigger player than Groupon. LivingSocial offers deals in more than 127 markets
and four countries. We estimate that the US Online spending (on which local deals market is
dependent) is likely to edge up to $23.6B in 2010 up from $22.4B in 2009.
- Coupons:
Founded in 1998, Coupons is a leader in interactive coupon solutions, providing clients with a
solution to coupon based promotions and consumer services.
The Company's marketing technology solutions have helped top brands and retailers reach
consumers on thousands of Web sites with alternatives to offline-delivered coupons. Users can
save money by using options such as printable coupons, Save to card offers and local coupons.
Coupons.com is the largest printable coupon Website on the Internet. Coupon Codes are
available for diverse product categories.
- Yelp:
Launched in October 2004 by former employees of PayPal, Yelp is a local review website where
users can write and read reviews on various categories. Yelp also offers its users social
networking features such as the ability for users to add friends, form groups, arrange and
conduct events, participate in discussion forums.
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The existence of products outside of realm of the common product boundaries increases the
propensity of customers to switch to alternatives.
There exist in the global market many competitors that develop offers so similar to Groupon
products, as it is mentioned in the last paragraph (Coupon, LivingSocial, Yelp…and many others).
The latest initiative related by the webs sites in the U.S. This proposal called Green Box Top, that
want to make Corporate Social Responsibility. Green Box Top was born in August 2010 and it
allocates part of the profits made by selling the coupons or offers a social cause. The companies
wishing to participate in these promotions will have to answer "The Green Story” criterion.
The bargaining power of customers is also described as the market of outputs: the ability of
customers to put the firm under pressure, which also affects the customer's sensitivity to price
changes.
We can say that a group of customers is powerful when it buys a large volume of products. This is not
the case with Groupon, because there are millions of Groupon customers in the world that only buy a
small quantity of offers. Also we can mention that the buyers groups are not concentrated.
Moreover, the products bought by customers are not an important part of their expenditures, so
they are less sensible to the price changes. Finally Groupon only sells his products (offers) when a
fixed number of customers is going to buy it, it means that Groupon can remove the offers if there is
not the minimum number of buyers.
As a conclusion it is clear that Groupon customers don’t have a big negotiation power.
The bargaining power of suppliers is also described as the market of inputs. Suppliers of raw
materials, components, labor, and services (such as expertise) to the firm can be a source of power
over the firm, when there are few substitutes. Suppliers may refuse to work with the firm, or, e.g.,
may charge excessively high prices for unique resources.
Groupon´s provider market is formed by a huge amount of companies that work in different markets,
this feature facilitates the search for substitute to Groupon and supplier switch.
It is also a highly diversified market and there are no labor unions between suppliers making this
group less powerful at negotiating time.
From the fact that Groupon´s providers can be changed anytime, we can conclude that Groupon´s
suppliers are not a powerful group as customers are.
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Videos
- CBS News; Surprising Ways to Save Money; October 22, 2010
- CNBC; Groupon: Fastest Growing Company Ever?; August 19, 2010
Webography
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupon
- http://www.groupon.com/learn
- http://www.grouponworks.com/
- http://www.crunchbase.com/company/groupon
- http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/groupon
Statistics
- http://statistics.allfacebook.com/developers/single/groupon/8878/c
- http://www.linkedin.com/company/groupon/statistics
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14. Appendix
APPENDIX A: Example of the ROI and profits on the operations of Groupon
RESULTS
Profit from purchases w/ certificate Campaign Profit $1.076,52
Long term Profits (includes growth of customer
base, revenue effects tied to brand value and
purchases with certificate) Total Long Term Profit $13.883,33
ROI over the "Long Time" Period ROI 130,77%
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