Marketing of Groupon - Case Study Example

The paper "Marketing of Groupon" is a perfect example of a case study on marketing. Groupon.com is an online site that uses crowd-sourcing to offer huge discounts to buyers for products and services that are featured on that particular day as a deal-of-the-day. The company offers localized coupons to about 300 cities worldwide (“About Us,” n.d.). The major goal of the organization is to offer consumers great products and services at unbeatable prices with discounts ranging from 50% to 90%. This is its greatest strength as it seeks to build its market share of the online retail market. From the online presence and presentation, Groupon.com’s typical customer would be an internet savvy individual anywhere in the globe where the company has local partners. This individual would be old enough to own a credit card for making the purchases and is adventurous to try out new products/services because of this make up most of the discounted offers.

Groupon.com has carved out a unique market space, considering that it offers diverse products and services, which makes it difficult to evaluate whether it has traditional direct competitors. Of course, its success has made numerous clones to pop up across the globe (Wauters, 2010) but it is possible that it still has market leadership in this new market space. Its major strengths are its brand as the trailblazer, its huge market presence, and its large financial backing of about US$ 1.2 billion. Its big weaknesses are that it's business model is easy to replicate and therefore it may face difficulty in sustaining its first-mover competitive advantage. Groupon.com’s greatest opportunity is in the ease with which it can extend to more cities in the world. Currently, it is leveraging its brand by extending its offering to willing collaborators through its Groupon Affiliate Program. Its major threat is the low barriers to entry or threat of forwarding integration posed by its suppliers.
The macro-environmental climate appears favorable for Groupon.com. The possible difficulties that it may have encountered due to political, legal, social, cultural and technological issues have already been addressed by other major online retailers such as Amazon.com and E-bay because the platform used is one and the same. The fact that the world is emerging from an economic recession (economic environment) translates to an increased market of discount/bargain shoppers who would appreciate Groupon.com’s value proposition. Read More