The number of Vancouver Group Buy Sites have been dramatically increasing over the past few months. Groupon, being the first Group Buy Sites that I’ve subscribed to- seem to have the most attractive deals to me.
These Vancouver Group Buy Sites can be categorized as services in a marketing perspective. The four characteristics of any service:
Intangibility: Using Groupon and other Group Buy Sites are services because simply there is nothing to be touched, or tasted. You’re purchasing through these websites to get your “product”- which is usually a coupon.
Inseparability: When purchasing from these websites, the service is being produced and consumed at the same time. From reading the textbook, it says that service is inseparable from its consumption, customers rarely have the opportunity to try the service before they purchase it” – which is why websites like Groupon offers “The Groupon Promise -Nothing is more important to us than treating our customers well. If you ever feel like Groupon let you down, give us a call and we’ll return your purchase – simple as that.” This amplifies the trust from a consumer’s point of view towards the company.
Variability: Groupon varies from the other Group Buy Sites from their deals. Due to their wide range of partnerships with big companies, they are able to get a lot more attracting and popular deals around cities than many of the Group Buy Sites.
Perishable: As mentioned in the textbook, services cannot be perished for future uses. For example, Groupon Coupons have an expiry date that is close to the near future. Coupons must be used before this date otherwise it will be treated as a sunk cost at the purchasers own risk.
Being a regular purchaser of these deals, I am quite loyal towards Groupon. Their deals are often to be most attractive to me- maybe due to its large network of partnerships with big companies, they seem to be able to get a lot of good deals. Below, is a short video about Groupon- how Google tried to acquire this $5 billion worth company:
Unfortunately, Google wasn’t able to acquire the company as the projected revenue was much higher than what Google had offered- Groupon surely holds big potential to be very successful!
-Mandy