What did you learn about teams, yourself, and marketing?

• I learned that communication is really important when working in teams.
• I learned that marketing is more than just advertisements and promotions. The other 3Ps are also very important.

What skills did you enhance or develop, if any?

• After working on these assignments, I think my researching skills have improved.
• I also have a better understanding about the components of marketing plans such as defining target segments, stating positioning strategy, applying the marketing mix, etc.

What would you do differently next time?

• Our groups was deducted some marks for not closely following the rubric, so next time I will make sure that the whole team is clear on what is expected and make sure that are contents match what the rubric is looking for.

Connie’s post The Fall Of Groupon discussed about how Groupon is struggling to stay profitable and relevant in people’s mind.I agree with her that Groupon is in an “low-entry-barrier industry” and that the industry also seems to be in the declining stage. However, I don’t really think that Groupon will be able to reposition itself “from a transaction-based business to a long-term relationship-oriented one”. I think that Groupon’s business model of offering discounts makes it hard to develop and maintain strong customer loyalty, for people that use Groupon focuses more on deals than  on who is providing them the deals(in this case Groupon). As long as another website is able to offer better deals or that Groupon is no longer able to offer deal they are looking for, these customers will move on.

Nonetheless, like Connie said, Groupon has a strong brand name and “is very well-known in North America and almost synonymous with ‘daily deal websites’”, so as long as there is still a market for discounts and as long as companies are still willing to work and partner with Groupon, I think that it will still stay around for quite a while.