The Best Group Buying Books of All Time

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Industrial Management, grade: 110/110, University of Siena, course: Industrial economy, language: English, abstract: It has been more than two decades since internet boosted its potential and now it can be considered a fearful competitor of many mortal businesses such as retailers, advertisers or even intermediaries. It is also known that the advent of internet in our daily life has also changed many systems' structures such as the transaction costs in B2B, B2C or even the C2C models.

Internet has abolished geographical boundaries, connected people and facilitated information flow. We now live in a world that everything happens in real time, which also brought changes in economic equilibriums, marketing strategies as well as speculation margins. Amazon, Google, EBay has revolutionized the custom of traditional shopping, increasing consumer's addiction to consumption by differentiating products in every possible and imaginable manner. Well, this work's attempt is to shed a light on the dynamics of this evolution, to acknowledge the main players and see how equilibrium can be set and re-set incessantly in a very volatile market due to its lack of physicality (i.e there is a physical gap between supplier and demander at the purchasing moment, therefore is very difficult to build customer loyalty). The example used to extrapolate some statistical evidence is linked to group buying e-commers such as coupon companies. It is the case of Groupon.com, the daily offers company with the highest growth rate among web companies since 2008 . The first part of the study is a theoretical literature review mainly arranged to give a theoretical backup to the empirical analysis that will follow. It seems that there has been a lot of field research on the topic. I suppose the reason is the worryingly fast growing pattern of these virtual business realities. The first chapters aims to concatenate the main featur.

Have you ever wondered about the best way to attract hundreds - even thousands - of new customers or clients? Then immediately worried about the upfront costs of finding and reaching out to those potential new business users? For the past few years, group discount websites such as Groupon and Living Social have been connecting small business owners with eager new clients by presenting special offers on goods or services to their extensive collection of email recipients. These time-limited offers are often a huge win for both the seller (in the form of new users/purchasers/clients) and the buyer (in the form of large discounts).

Advertising costs for this venture are often limited only to a percentage of the sale price on the item, meaning you only have to pay the group buying site for a percentage of sales actually made, not spend hundreds to thousands of dollars in ad space without any sure method of calculating return on your investment. But with dozens of such sites available on the Internet, how do you know which will be the best fit for your business? Our book was written by web-savvy internet marketers to help guide you through the process of choosing not only the best sites, but also the best way to prepare for the influx of new sales and some of the hidden costs of offering a group promotion. For example, if you are a hairdresser, will you be able to make room in your schedule for multiple new clients while maintaining enough time to cater to existing loyal customers? As a toy store owner, can you afford to purchase, store and package enough volume of your sale item without causing temporary cash flow problems? And is there any way to compare the different client lists of group buying sites to know which best suits your small town barbecue restaurant? For much less than the cost of a tiny ad in the local classifieds, this book will guide you step-by-step through the process of making offers on group buying websites without succumbing to the most common pitfalls. As a bonus, there is also a worksheet included to help you calculate the total cost of your offer and whether, in the end, it is the best use of your advertising resources.

Group buying is a new retailing and e-commerce phenomenon. Similar to the case of the .com bubble, it attracted many players with almost identical business model that led to consecutive competitive pressures, threatening the existence of many group buying companies. This book aims at analysing group buying firms and providing them with competitive solutions enabling survival on the marketplace. The research investigates three countries: Sweden, Russia and Lithuania, and employs strategic management, business model, entrepreneurship and other theoretical approaches.

It considers the whole value chain by having 11 case studies of group buying companies, 3 cases of their suppliers and a quantitative customer survey. The analysis of theory and research findings leads to identifying the key success factors, strategic groups and forecasts of their future. Finally, 8 dimensions of competitive solutions are identified and 12 final solutions are proposed. The results of the research will be useful for professionals, working in any e-commerce area and group buying businesses, researchers and wide auditorium interested in marketing, strategy, competitive solutions and entrepreneurship.