Groupon was the one to pioneer this new marketing technique. They were the first people heard of in order to receive a big deal on a daily basis. Google had even tried to buyout Groupon in the past, but they did not agree to the sale. Groupon is in over 500 markets and 44 countries. The only problem that Groupon has is that it's business plan was so easy for others to replicate. With that being said, there has been many other companies that have joined this area of business of the daily business deal and are trying to beat out Groupon. Essentially these companies are trying to beat Groupon with its own business model. Although there are many imitators, Groupon still continues to do well. In fact, they are doing so well that they are in talks with banks about an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that would make Groupon be worth $25 billion. Talk about a big increase since Google offered them $6 billion, it looks like Groupon made the right decision to not sell to Google!
One of the major competitors that Groupon faces is LivingSocial.
When looking at LivingSocial's website, they claim to be "the fastest-growing company in the social-buying category," but they don't give much information about how their company differentiates itself from others, like Groupon. I think its for that reason that people often don't just use LivingSocial, but they use multiple daily deal websites to get the most options for deals. If you think about, if you don't have to buy a membership to either website, then why limit yourself to only one when you could get double the amount of coupons!
If having to check for the deals on your email doesn't sound great, you have the ability with both websites to download the app on your iPhone and have the deals pushed to your phone daily. This way, both websites offer as much convenience as possible with their coupons, so that in the end you will buy more!
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